Effect of temperature in cerium-ion-catalyzed bromate-driven oscillators

The influence of substrate composition and initial reagent concentrations on activation energies in closed Ce-ion catalyzed Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ) reactions is reported. While changes in the initial concentration of organic substrate, bromate ion or sulfuric acid showed different changes in activation energies for the various organic substrate BZ systems, for all systems it was found that lowering the Ce-ion concentration leads to a significant decrease in the overall activation energy of the oscillator. When comparing the performance of a malonic acid oscillator run in a batch or in a continuous stirred flow reactor (CSTR), it was found that under CSTR conditions Q10 values may become as low as 1.3, while for the batch system the corresponding Q10 values are about 2.3.