BELOUSOV -- ZHABOTINSKII REACTION
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(1) |
| ID | ◀ 278 ▶ |
| Object type | Discipline oriented, Methodology or model |
- “A complex chemical reaction involving the cerium-catalyzed bromination and oxidation of malonic acid by bromate ions” (J.S. TURNER, 1982, p.48).
A now famous chemical reaction, whose relation to nonlinear systemic processes studies is thus described by TURNER: “The great interest of the Belousov-Zhabotinskii (BZ) reaction lies in its unique ability to exhibit a wide variety of characteristic nonlinear behavior. Ranging from homogeneous chemical oscillations in stirred reactors to travelling chemical waves and stationary spatial structures in unstirred mixtures, the phenomena observed in this system include all the types of nonequilibrium coherent structures that have been studied theoretically in the past decades. In the last few years, besides, new experiments have suggested that the same chemical processes which give rise to coherent phenomena may also yield incoherent or chaotic behavior as well” (p.48).
The BZ reaction is an example of a reaction-diffusion system , resulting from the competition of a force that tends to produce dissipative structures and another that tends to dampen them out.