Multicomponent convection in the chlorite-tetrathionate reaction

The effect of chemical composition on the density fingering arising in the acid-catalyzed reaction of chlorite and tetrathionate ions is investigated experimentally. The increase in the concentration of reactants increases the region of convective instability observed in the reaction for both upward and downward propagating fronts. The increase of hydroxide ion concentration, however, stabilizes the downward propagating fronts and destabilizes the upward propagating fronts allowing multicomponent convection to dominate the pattern formation for certain chemical composition. The density fingering is also analyzed quantitatively by determining the dispersion curves and their characteristics describing the initial evolution of the pattern formation. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.