A stoichiometric method for reducing simulation cost of chemical kinetic models

Mathematical models for chemically reacting systems have high degrees of freedom (very large) and are computationally expensive to analyse. In this discussion, we present and analyse a model reduction method that is based on stoichiometry and mass balances. This method can significantly reduce the high degrees of freedom of such systems. Numerical simulations are undertaken to validate and establish efficiency of the method. A practical example of acid mine drainage is used as a test case to demonstrate the efficacy of the procedure. Analytical results show that the stoichiometrically-reduced model is consistent with the original large model, and numerical simulations demonstrate that the method can accelerate convergence of the numerical schemes in some cases.