Chloride Ion Inhibition, Stirring, and Temperature Effects in an Ethylacetoacetate Briggs-Rauscher Oscillator in Phosphoric and Hydrochloric Acids in a Batch Reactor

Briggs-Rauscher oscillating reaction has been investigated in hydrochloric acid media and in the presence of added chloride ions in phosphoric acid media in a batch reactor using ethylacetoacetate as the organic substrate. The changes in key oscillation parameters, namely, induction period, oscillation period, amplitude, and so forth, have been explained in terms of the steps of the skeleton mechanism proposed by Furrow and Noyes and by de Kepper and Epstein. In spite of several shortcomings as outlined in section 2 in the text, the same mechanistic steps are good enough to explain qualitatively most of the changes in oscillation parameters under different stirring rates and temperatures in phosphoric acid and hydrochloric acid media, particularly stirring effects explained well by the theory of imperfect mixing. Potential data indicate that 0.018 M HCl medium has the ability to exhibit near-zero/zero amplitudes before cessation of oscillations. Inhibition reactions from a low Cl^- concentration in the 0.018 M HCl media appear to be responsible for this interesting dynamical transformation, as toward the end of oscillations, the difference between [I^-] and [I^-]_crit [see eq J in the text] becomes very small because of depleted component chemicals due to chemical reactions.