More complex kinetics aided by Matlab/Simulink

The chapter extends the chemical kinetics of Chapter 3 to more complex chemical reactions, partly discovered in the second half of the 20th century, being of significance for not only chemistry but also general science and dynamic systems. This fact suggests that the treatment employs methods and concepts of dynamic system theory as partly done in Chapter 3. In particular, an extensive use of linear state equations, their state matrix, and the relevant eigenvalues will be done in order to assess stability properties of the chemical kinetics under study. The Chapter starts from the well-known class of Michaelis–Menten reactions in biochemistry. The second reaction is the striking iodine clock, in which the production of triiodide changes the solution color into dark blue. The second part of the chapter is devoted to oscillating chemical reactions (Briggs-Rauscher and Belousov-Zhabotinsky), whose underlying mechanism is that of the classical second-order Lotka–Volterra equations, which are briefly recalled.