Sustained Spatiotemporal Patterns in the Bromate-Sulfite Reaction

The acid autoactivated bromate-sulfite reaction exhibits spatial bistability, travelling acid-base fronts, and spatiotemporal oscillations when operated in an unstirred one-side-fed spatial reactor. We show that a skeleton kinetic model, recently proposed by Szanto and Rabai, in which we take into account the charge and the actual diffusivity of solvated ions, provides theoretical results in good agreement with experimental observations. The differences with previous observations made with the homologous iodate-sulfite reaction are discussed. Despite the analogies in the phase diagram of these two systems, it is concluded that the relevant kinetic mechanism of the iodate-sulfite system cannot be just a homologous transcription of that presently working well for the bromate-sulfite system, even in excess sulfite conditions