Extracting the mechanisms and kinetic models of complex reactions from atomistic simulation data

Determining reaction mechanisms and kinetic models, which can be used for chemical reaction engineering and design, from atomistic simulation is highly challenging. In this study, we develop a novel methodology to solve this problem. Our approach has three components: (1) a procedure for precisely identifying chemical species and elementary reactions and statistically calculating the reaction rate constants; (2) a reduction method to simplify the complex reaction network into a skeletal network which can be used directly for kinetic modeling; and (3) a deterministic method for validating the derived full and skeletal kinetic models. The methodology is demonstrated by analyzing simulation data of hydrogen combustion. The full reaction network comprises 69 species and 256 reactions, which is reduced into a skeletal network of 9 species and 30 reactions. The kinetic models of both the full and skeletal networks represent the simulation data well. In addition, the essential elementary reactions and their rate constants agree favorably with those obtained experimentally. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. A novel method developed to determine reaction mechanisms and kinetic models from atomistic simulation of chemical reactions. The method which integrates reaction detection, simplification of reaction network and derivation of kinetic model, provides a possibility to bridge the gap between chemical reaction engineering and molecular simulation.