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  • Letter
  • Open Access

Frozen autocatalytic fronts in a radial flow

L. Negrojević, A. Comolli, Fabian Brau*, and A. De Wit†

  • *Contact author: fabian.brau@ulb.be
  • †Contact author: anne.de.wit@ulb.be
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Phys. Rev. Research 6, L042044 – Published 20 November, 2024

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.6.L042044

Abstract

Autocatalytic reaction-diffusion fronts are localized reaction zones propagating at a constant speed with a constant width. We show both theoretically and experimentally that, if the reactant Y of the autocatalytic reaction is injected radially at a constant flow rate in a sea of the autocatalytic species X, a stationary front can be maintained at a fixed position that scales linearly with the flow rate. When this reaction front is about to reach a stationary state, a second outward traveling front emerges to adapt the outer concentration of the autocatalytic species to the stoichiometry ratio between X and Y. Simple analytical solutions to the reaction-diffusion-advection equations governing the dynamics are computed for both fronts. The analytical predictions for the stationary front position and moving front dynamics as a function of injection flow rate, reactant concentration, and gap of the quasi-two-dimensional reactor agree well with experimental results obtained with the autocatalytic chlorite-tetrathionate reaction.

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Phys. Rev. Research 6, L042044– Published 20 November, 2024
  • Received 16 July 2024
  • Accepted 16 October 2024
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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