Dynamics of rapid extinction in a lumped system with Arrhenius chemistry

Abstract

AbstractReacting systems with Arrhenius chemistry can exhibit multiple steady states for γ > 4(1 + β)/β where γ is activation energy and β is the heat of reaction. We give a detailed analysis of the extremely rapid jump which takes place as catalyst activity slowly decays through criticality. Previous analyses are asymptotic in the limit γ → ∞; here we relax the large γ assumption and only require that passage through criticality is slow.