Derivation of a quantitative minimal model from a detailed elementary-step mechanism supported by mathematical coupling analysis

Accurate experimental data increasingly allow the development of detailed elementary-step mechanisms for complex chemical and biochemical reaction systems. Model reduction techniques are widely applied to obtain representations in lower-dimensional phase space which are more suitable for mathematical analysis, efficient numerical simulation, and model-based control tasks. Here, we exploit a recently implemented numerical algorithm for error-controlled computation of the minimum dimension required for a still accurate reduced mechanism based on automatic time scale decomposition and relaxation of fast modes. We determine species contributions to the active (slow) dynamical modes of the reaction system and exploit this information in combination with quasi-steady-state and partial-equilibrium approximations for explicit model reduction of a novel detailed chemical mechanism for the Ru-catalyzed light-sensitive Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction. The existence of a minimum dimension of seven is demonstrated to be mandatory for the reduced model to show good quantitative consistency with the full model in numerical simulations. We derive such a maximally reduced seven-variable model from the detailed elementary-step mechanism and demonstrate that it reproduces quantitatively accurately the dynamical features of the full model within a given accuracy tolerance.