Asymptotic analysis for coupled hydrogen, carbon monoxide, methanol and ethanol reduced kinetic mechanisms

Abstract

Based on a mechanism composed by 372 reversible chemical reactions among 56 reactive species for the oxidation of ethanol, we propose a reduction strategy to obtain a six- step kinetic mechanism for the methanol and a seven-step mechanism for the ethanol. A three- step kinetic mechanism results for the carbon monoxide and two-step for the hydrogen. The reduction strategy consists of four steps: 1) es- timate the order of magnitude of the rates of chemical reaction, 2) de ne the main chain, 3) apply the steady-state and partial equilibrium assumptions and 4) justify the assumptions by asymptotic analysis. The main advantage of the obtained reduced mechanisms is the de- crease of the work needed to solve the system of chemical equations. Such decrease is propor- tional to the order of the number of elementary reactions present in the complete mechanism.