The rate constants and
are much larger than
. The
intermediate B should therefore be removed rapidly, which means that the
steady-state approximation should be appropriate. You should be able to
work out the following equation using the steady-state approximation:
This means that, shortly after the establishment of the steady state, we
should have . The initial
rate would be
.
This rate is roughly equal to
. This means that
.
We want no more than 1% of the A (0.004mol/L) to be converted to
product. This means that
so
that
(in round numbers).