Abstract
The oscillatory Belousov-Zhabotinskii reaction with acetylacetone as substrate has been studied in a pair of stirred tank reactors coupled by mass flow.The in put stothe two cells,and hence the uncoupled oscillation frequencies, are slightly different.Depend in gupon the coupling strength,three types of behavior are observed:in-phaseentrainment,out-of-phaseentrainment, or phase death(cessation of oscillations and transition to a steady state).For some values of the coupling,more than one of these three states maybe stable.The origins of this behavior are discussed in terms of theField-Kóros-Noyes mechanism for the chemistry and the role of the intercell transport.Simulations using two coupled three-variable Oregonator models and aphase plane analysis of those results give good agreement with the experiments and support our mechanistic interpretation of the dynamical behavior.