Reduced description in the reaction kinetics

Models of complex reactions in thermodynamically isolated systems often dem onstrate evolution towards low-dimensional manifolds in the phase space. Fo r this class of models, we suggest a direct method to construct such manifo lds, and thereby to reduce the effective dimension of the problem. The appr oach realizes the invariance principle of the reduced description, it is ba sed on iterations rather than on a small parameter expansion, it leads to t ractable linear problems, and is consistent with thermodynamic requirements . The approach is tested with a model of catalytic reaction. (C) 2000 Elsev ier Science B.V, All rights reserved.