Belousov’s reaction

A. M. Zhabotinsky, Periodic process of the oxidation of malonic acid in solution. Study of the kinetics of Belousov s reaction. Biofizika 9, 1306 (1964). 

Zhabotinskii proposed initially a reaction scheme to explain Belousov s reaction as... 

In 1961, Anatol Zhabotinsky was looking for Belousov s reaction. He replaced citric acid by malonic acid and found similarity in reaction behavior [52]. Zhabotinsky has proposed a reaction equation (Eq. 1.9) as shown helow. 

Belousov s reaction, the metal ion (generally Ce " ) catalyzed bromination of an organic substrate, most often malonic acid, by bromate, was developed experimentally by Zhabotlnskii (I 5 ] ). It was, however, the publication (Field, Koros and Noyes, [6 ] ) of a detailed mechanism for the system and of a simplified three-variable model (the Oregonator, Field and Noyes, [ 7 ] ) of that mechanism that spurred interest in the BZ system as a prototype o,f periodic chemical behavior. 

Figure Bl.14.5. J2-weighted images of the propagation of chemical waves in an Mn catalysed Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction. The images were acquired in 40 s intervals (a) to (1) using a standard spin echo pulse sequence. The slice thickness is 2 nun. The diameter of the imaged pill box is 39 nun. The bright bands...

Fig. 5 MR images of traveling (reaction-diffusion)waves in the manganese-catalysed Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction, taken from the centre of a bed packed with 1 mm diameter glass spheres (22). Waves are formed both inside the bed and above it in the liquid phase. Images (a-d) are shown at time intervals of 16 s. 

S. Vajda and T. Tur3nyi, Principal component analysis for reducing the Edelsan-Field-Noyes model of Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction, J. Phys. Chem. 

One of the well-studied systems that illustrates this successive-bifurcation behavior is the Belousov-Zhabotinski reaction. Let me briefly show you the results of some experiments done at the University of Texas at Austin,8 referring for further details to the discussion by J. S. Turner in this volume. The experimental setup of the continuously stirred reactor... 

About two months after I changed jobs, Shnol gave me Belousov s recipe on a small piece of paper together with a tiny amount of reagents. Belousov s recipe was a really old-fashioned one. Weigh this much of this salt and this much of that substance, dissolve them in moderately diluted sulfuric acid, and add water to the final volume. I did it and observed the oscillations in the solution color. The solution was very hot, and this accelerated the reaction. The period of oscillations was rather short. 

When I wrote my first manuscript, I encountered an ethical problem. I was unaware of Belousov s publications, and I had not received his recipe direcdy from him. So I decided to put his name in the subtitle of the paper, which read A study of kinetics of the Belousov reaction, and gave the manuscript to Shnol. I wanted him to be a co-author because it was his idea to do this study and he was my official adviser. He declined, saying that he had done nothing, but he was pleased to see the manuscript completed. I also asked him whether I could send the manuscript to Belousov before submitting it for publication. He told me that we can send it by the same route that the recipe had come. 

About two weeks after having sent the manuscript, I received it back with a nice short letter from Belousov saying that he was glad that somebody continued the work that he was too busy to carry on. He also attached a manuscript of his own in which I found a reference to the only published communication by Belousov on the oscillating reactions. I immediately went to a library and found his communication in a booklet entitled Short Communications on Radiation Medicine, an obscure and very unlikely place for such a paper. The booklet was published by a medical research institute where Belousov was the head of the analytical chemistry laboratory. I added a reference to Belousov s paper to my manuscript and sent it off to the Russian journal Biofizika. The paper appeared two years later. 

First I reproduced Belousov s results. Then I modified the system and made it much more convenient to study. I showed that it was self oscillating and determined several key steps in the reaction mechanism. After that, I wrote my first paper. However, I did not have a complete understanding of the chemical mechanism of the oscillations. Then I found the last key part of the mechanism, namely, what species was the inhibitor. It gave me a qualitative understanding of the entire chemistry involved in the mechanism (Box 2), and I was able to find a large set of similar oscillating... 

S. Vajda S. and T. Turtinyi, Principal Component Analysis for Reducing the Edelson-Field-Noyes Model of the Belousov-Zhabotinsky Reaction, J. Phys. Chem. 90 (1986) 1664-1670. 

Today it comes as no surprise that chemical reactions can oscillate spontaneously—such reactions have become a standard demonstration in chemistry classes, and you may have seen one yourself. (For recipes, see Winfree (1980).) But in Belousov s day, his discovery was so radical that he couldn t get his work published. It was thought that all solutions of chemical reagents must go monoton-ically to equilibrium, because of the laws of thermodynamics. Belousov s paper was rejected by one journal after another. According to Winfree (1987b, p. 161), one editor even added a snide remark about Belousov s supposedly discovered discovery to the rejection letter. 

For more about the history of the BZ reaction, see Winfree (1984, 1987b). An English translation of Belousov s original paper from 1951 appears in Field and Burger (1985). 

IIIC) Pikovskii, A. S. A Dynamical Model for Periodic and Chaotic Oscillations in the 1981 Belousov-Zhabotinskii Reaction. Phys. Lett. 85A, 13-16... 

IIIC) Tomita, K., Tsuda, I. Towards the Interpretation of Hudson s Experiments on the 1980 Belousov-Zhabotinskii Reaction (Chaos due to Delocalization). Progress in Theor. Phys. 64(4) 1138-1160... 

S.-H. Yau, Mechanistic studies on the cerium-catalyzed Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction, thesis, University of Marburg, 2001. 

S. C. Muller, T. Plesser and B. Hess, Two dimensional spectrophotometry of spiral wave propagation in the Belousov-Zhabotinskii reaction , Physica, D24, 71 (1987). 

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