Damping and clustering into crowded environment of catalytic chemical oscillators

TL;DR

This study investigates how catalytic obstacles in a crowded environment influence chemical oscillations, damping behavior, and clustering, revealing that obstacles induce damping and localized reaction clusters despite diffusion.

Contribution

It demonstrates how static catalytic obstacles alter oscillatory dynamics, induce damping characterized by a decay constant, and promote reaction clustering in a crowded environment.

Findings

Damping of oscillations increases linearly with obstacle volume fraction.

Regions of favored catalytic reactions emerge despite random obstacle distribution.

Reaction clusters form around obstacles even with significant diffusion.

Abstract

A system formed by a crowded environment of catalytic obstacles and complex oscillatory chemical reactions is inquired. The obstacles are static spheres of equal radius, which are placed in a random way. The chemical reactions are carried out in a fluid following a multiparticle collision scheme where the mass, energy and local momentum are conserved. Firstly, it is explored how the presence of catalytic obstacles changes the oscillatory dynamics from a limit cycle to a fix point reached after a damping. The damping is characterized by the decay constant, which grows linearly with volume fraction for low values of the mesoscale collision time and the catalytic reaction constant. Additionally, it is shown that, although the distribution of obstacles is random, there are regions in the system where the catalytic chemical reactions are favored. This entails that in average the radius of gyrations of catalytic chemical reaction does not match with the radius of gyration of obstacles, that is, clusters of reactions emerge on the catalytic obstacles, even when the diffusion is significant.