Modelling the sulphur chemistry evolution in Orion KL

Context. We present a study of the sulphur chemistry evolution in the region Orion KL along the gas and grain phases of the cloud. Aims. Our aim is to investigate the processes that dominate the sulphur chemistry in Orion KL and to determine how physical and chemical parameters, such as the final mass of the star and the initial elemental abundances, influence the evolution of the hot core and of the surrounding outflows and shocked gas (the plateau). Methods. We independently modelled the chemistry evolution of the hot core and the plateau using the time-dependent gas-grain model UCL CHEM and considering two different phase calculations. Phase I starts with the collapsing cloud and the depletion of atoms and molecules onto grain surfaces. Phase II starts when a central protostar is formed and the evaporation from grains takes place. We show how the stellar mass, the gas density, the gas depletion efficiency, the initial sulphur abundance, the shocked gas temperature, and the different chemical paths on the grains leading to different reservoirs of sulphur on the mantles affect sulphur-bearing molecules at different evolutionary stages for both components. We also compare the predicted column densities with those inferred from observations of the species SO, SO2, CS, OCS, H2S, and H2CS. Results. The models that reproduce the observations of the largest number of sulphur-bearing species in both components are those with an initial sulphur abundance of 0.1 times the sulphur solar abundance (0.1S) and a density of at least nH=5×106 cm−3 in the shocked gas region