A total of 47 participants met at the Kafara Hotel in Palermo from Thursday to Sunday. A welcome and introduction to REACTOR were held on the first evening and scientific sessions held on the next two days, along with a poster session. The main aim of the workshop was identified as being to initiate interactions between the various groups in the REACTOR programme. Representatives from some 20 research groups made presentations mainly aimed at describing the research areas, projects and expertise available in their laboratories.
A Steering Committee meeting was held on the afternoon of Saturday 20th.
In the final session, a feedback session discussing the future directions in which REACTOR might help the development of the general subject area among the participating groups was held. Discussion was also given to how to bring in more Contributing Countries, identifying groups with which collaborations could be effectively developed.
The following “arriving areas” were identified as having arisen in several talks/posters or in discussion:
We had been encouraged to consider coupling nonlinear kinetics to other transport processes than diffusion, with convection being of especial interest: both numerical and theoretical advances are timely and will connect to combustion, atmospheric dynamics and biological systems as well as purely chemical.
The coupling of phase transition kinetics with reactions had been the theme of several contributions, including surface reactions and polymer systems.
Related to the above issue – are gels just inert supports or do they influence (or are they influenced by) the chemical reaction occurring within them? Mechanochemical systems are of interest – a batch pH oscillator would be of value.
These were one of the “novel reactor” types discussed.
Issues are: synchronisation; global/local coupling; control of spatially extended systems.
The webpage could be used to link researchers to new software packages available for distribution.
Wave splitting was one phenomenon described in several talks in different chemical situations.
Related to the “gels” comment above: wave propagation in inhomogeneous media will be of biological significance.
It will be continue to be of importance to understand the chemistry and where possible produce reduced model representations.
The next workshop was announced and will be held at Tetley Hall, University of Leeds from 7-9th September 2001.
A special issue of the journal PCCP will be published in January 2002. The deadline for papers will be September 2001. All members of the REACTOR programme are invited to submit papers.