The initiation of methane/air autoignition: The important chemical components for various initial conditions

A reactive system will be considered, the slow dynamics of which is characterized by time scales that are of explosive character; i.e., the components of the system that generate them tend to lead the system away from equilibrium. In particular, the initiation of a methane/air mixture autoignition will be considered for various initial temperatures and pressures. The species that relate to the explosive time scales and reactions that are responsible for the generation of these time scales will be identified. The analysis will be based on the Computational Singular Perturbation (CSP) algorithm, which is employed for the construction of the the reduced system that governs the long range (slow) evolution of the system. It will be demonstrated that an excellent agreement with the existing literature is obtained.