A Generalized Mechanism for Bromate-Driven Oscillators

Abstract

This class of chemical oscillators was first discovered by Belousov ❘1❘ in the reaction of citric acid with acidic bromate catalyzed by cerium salts. Zhabotinskii [2] extended this system to other organic substrates and catalysts (so-called classical BZ-reaction). In this system also other unusual nonlinear chemical phenomena like bistability and propagating waves were discovered stimulating a great deal of theoretical work. Therefore, the understanding of the general nonlinear mechanisms of bromatedriven oscillators is of general interest for recent progress in nonlinear kinetics and chemical dissipative structures. Besides the classical BZR, some new chemical compositions of bromate oscillators have been discovered: oscillations without catalysts [3]; oscillations with mixed substrates [4]; heterogeneous oscillators with organic [5] and inorganic [6] substrates (in that case, elementary bromine is scrubbed from the reaction solution by an inert gas-stream, by liquid-liquid extraction or by reaction with a solid [7]); oscillations in the presence of silver ions that buffer bromide concentrations on a very low level. In [8,9] attempts were made to classify bromate oscillators on the above described chemical phenomenology. The aim of the present paper is to propose a scheme from the kinetic standpoint.KeywordsMixed SubstrateChemical OscillatorChromo Tropic AcidNonlinear KineticCerium SaltThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.