A MODEL FOR THE CHEMICAL EVOLUTION OF THE GALAXY WITH REFUSES

A model is presented for the chemical evolution of the solar neighbour hood which takes into account three families of galactic objects, acco rding to their condensation states: stars, refuses and gas. Stars are defined as all condensed objects with masses greater than or equal to the minimum mass which ignites hydrogen and which will give rise to an evolutionary track on the HR diagram to the left of Hayashi's limit; refuses include the remnants, which are compact objects resulting from stellar deaths, and the residues, which have masses not large enough to ignite hydrogen; gas is defined as the mass which can be condensed to form stars and/or residues. We have developed equations for the mas s evolution of each family, and have studied the gas metallicity distr ibution within the framework of the instantaneous recycling approximat ion, adopting different initial conditions. In order to constrain the model parameters we have also used preliminary evaluations of comet cl oud masses to investigate the role of the residues as sinks of heavy e lements in the Galaxy.