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  Home > JCE Print > Journal of Chemical Education > Issues > 1996  > September  >
In The Laboratory
The BZ Reaction: Experimental and Model Studies in the Physical Chemistry Laboratory
Omar Benini, Rinaldo Cervellati, and Pasquale Fetto
Dipartimento di Chimica "G. Ciamician", Universitá di Bologna, via Selmi 2, I-40126 Bologna, Italy
Cover
September 1996
Vol. 73 No. 9
p. 865
Abstract
The paper illustrates integrated physical chemistry-computational lab experiments at the tertiary level on the "classic" Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ) oscillating reaction. The complete work was designed for studying the behavior of the Ce4+/Ce3+- and Fe(phen)32+/Fe(phen)33+-catalyzed BZ systems and developing a kinetic model to interpret the experimental data. The students prepared the appropriate reactant mixtures and followed spectrophotometrically the absorbance of Ce4+ and Fe(phen)32+ ions. Then they plot the period of oscillation as a function of the initial concentration of any one of the mixture components observing in particular the difference in the dependence of the oscillation period on the [Ce4+]o and [Fe(phen)32+]o respectively. These differences suggest that the two redox couples catalyze the BZ reaction by different mechanisms. A kinetic mathematical model based on the FKN mechanism for the cerium-catalyzed reaction is presented and discussed. The numerical intergration solutions of the resulting rate equations show that the model accounts satsfactorily for the oscillations of the Ce4+/Ce3+-catalyzed system but fails to reproduce the experimental behavior of the system catalyzed by the couple Fe(phen)32+/Fe(phen)33+. It has been proved that these integrated chemistry-computational lab experiments are a powerful tool in stimulating student interest in physical chemistry and in showing the importance of chemical kinetics in the elucidation of reaction mechanism.

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*  Citation
 J. Chem. Educ. 1996 73 865.
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*  History
 Created:
Last Updated:		 September 21, 1999
February 21, 2006
Link to Cover added (June 2004).
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