You have been recovering a dilute antibiotic from a fermentation broth by adsorption on activated carbon and have found that the mass transfer coefficient for this adsorption process is 6.1 x 104 cm/sec. In an effort to accelerate this process, you switch to a cation- exchange resin of the same size beads and keep all the details of your experiment the same. You find that the mass transfer coefficient is now 1.03 x 102 cm/sec. Because this coefficient is highly temperature-dependent, you suspect that it is influenced by an irreversible first order chemical reaction. The antibiotic has a diffusion coefficient of about 9.4 x 107 cm/sec. You may treat the adsorption material as a thin slab. What is the volumetric rate constant for the reaction?