The Gas-phase Kinetics input file provides a symbolic description of an elementary chemical reaction mechanism. This file is used during Pre-processing to create a Gas-phase Kinetics linking file (chem.asc) that stores pertinent information about that mechanism for access during the reactor-model simulation. The information in the Linking File is subsequently accessed by an initialization routine that copies the needed information into memory during a reacting-flow simulation. The stored information is used in calculations related to the equation of state, thermodynamic properties, and chemical production rates.

The Gas-phase Kinetics input file includes information on elements, species, thermodynamic data, and the reaction mechanism. Element data are read first, species data are second, followed by optional thermodynamic data, with reactions specified last. The thermodynamic data for the species may come be included in the Gas-phase Kinetics input file and/or from a Thermodynamic Database (for example, therm.dat). With the exception of the thermodynamic data, all input is free format. The required syntax for the four types of input is described in Element Data through Reaction Mechanism Description . The auxiliary keywords for gas-phase reactions are described in Table 3.7: Alphabetical Listing of Gas-phase Reaction Auxiliary Keywords and the options for specifying units on the REACTIONS line are described in Table 3.4: Alphabetical Listing of REACTIONS-line Options for Gas-phase Kinetics Data. Alphabetical Listing of Project Input Keywords describes the meaning and usage of each keyword entry that may be included as part of a Reactor Model input file.