Effect of Initial Reagent Concentrations on the Oscillatory Behavior of the BZ Reaction in a Batch Reactor NADEEM B. GANAIE, G. M. PEERZADA Post Graduate Department of Chemistry, University of Kashmir, Srinagar 190 006, Jammu & Kashmir, India Received 5 January 2009; revised 9 June 2009; accepted 10 June 2009 DOI 10.1002/kin.20442 Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). ABSTRACT: A detailed investigation on resorcinol as the Belousov–Zhabotinsky (BZ) oscillator in manganese(II) ion catalyzed reaction system with inorganic bromate (oxidant) and acetone (cosubstrate) was carried out in aqueous sulfuric acid medium (1.3 M). The aforesaid reagents were mixed with various concentrations to evolve the effective concentrations at which the reaction system exhibited better oscillations. The various oscillatory parameters such as time period (t p ), induction period (t in ), frequency (v), amplitude ( A), and number of oscillations (n) were derived, and the dependence of concentration of the reacting species on these oscillatory parameters was interpreted on the basis of the Field–Koros–Noyes mechanism. C  2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Chem Kinet 41: 650–657, 2009 INTRODUCTION The Belousov–Zhabotinsky (BZ) reaction [1,2] has been a research subject of nonlinear dynamics including chemical, physical, and biological interest. The BZ reaction shows temporal and spatio-temporal structures such as redox oscillation of the catalyst and travelling waves [1–6]. The overall process of the BZ reaction is the oxidation of an organic substrate such as citric acid or malonic acid by an oxidizing agent (bromate) in the presence of metal ions as catalyst Correspondence to: Nadeem B. Ganaie; e-mail: nadeemganaie@ rediffmail.com. Contract grant sponsor: Council of Scientific and Industrial Re- search, New Delhi, India. c  2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. under acidic conditions. Metal ions, such as cerium, iron, and manganese, are widely used as catalysts [7–13]. The mechanism of such reactions is explained in detail by Field, Koros, and Noyes (FKN) [3–5]. In the present work, resorcinol is chosen as BZ oscillator to study its oscillatory behavior in the reaction system, comprising inorganic bromate as the oxidant and manganese(II) ion as catalyst in 1.3 M sulfuric acid medium. The compound has sufficient solubility in aqueous acid medium and exhibits dynamic behavior over a wide range of concentrations. Moreover, owing to the presence of two phenolic OH groups, resorcinol has some similarity with biomolecules and, therefore, the present study can serve as a prototype example in understanding the behaviors possible in biology such as signal transmission and membrane transport in living organisms. The oscillations were also studied