As stated in the introduction, a grand challenge in catalysis and reaction engineering targets high yields of a desired product in the constraint of thermodynamic equilibrium and the mass action of Le Chatelier's principle. As shown in Figure , reaction systems can be thought of as a thermodynamic trajectory between the reactant and product. Under thermodynamic control, the reaction system performance will approach the product composition where the overall free energy, or chemical potential, is minimized. Since each molecule has significantly different free energy due to varying chemical potentials, bonding, and functional groups, this free energy landscape is a strong function of the reaction chemistry.