Modeling reaction kinetics in a homogeneous medium usually leads to stiff
systems of ordinary differential equations the dimension of which can be large.
The problem of determination of the minimal number of phase variables needed
to describe the characteristic behavior of large scale systems is extensively
addressed in current chemical kinetics literature from different point of views.
Only for a few of these approaches there exists a mathematical justification.
In this paper we describe and justify a procedure allowing directly to
determine how many and which state variables are essential in a
neighborhood of a given point of the extended phase space. This method
exploits the wide range of characteristic time-scales in a chemical
system and its mathematical justification is based on the theory of
invariant manifolds. The procedure helps to get chemical insight
into the intrinsic dynamics of a complex chemical process.
Keywords :
state space reduction, multi-scale systems, singularly perturbed systems, reaction kinetics