On the concept of stoichiometry of reaction mechanisms

The usual method to determine the stoichiometry implied by a reaction mechanism has an ambiguity arising from the need to specify the intermediates, leading in some cases to several possible stoichiometries. A formalization of mechanistic stoichiometry as an optimization problem removes the reliance on the concept of an intermediate, and clarifies the relation between stoichiometry of a mechanism and ideal yield of a target product. The proposed formalization is in terms of linear programming