Chaos in chemical reactions I recently read about Chaos Theory and was wondering if a chemical reaction results in or shows characteristics of chaos (I found a few examples of such reactions here)


  Chaos theory concerns deterministic systems whose behavior can in principle be predicted. Chaotic systems are predictable for a while and then 'appear' to become random.


If the reaction becomes unpredictable towards the time of attainment of equilibrium we can't possibly determine how the reaction will proceed during the time frame so will the reaction attain a state of equilibrium and will it be at the time it should've without chaos being in the picture? 

If the equilibrium shifts can we quantify by how much and how much more or less time will it take to attain it in general or we need to take specific reactions and analyze them?

Also after attaining equilibrium can the system again show Chaotic behaviour and if it does what can se say about the state of equilibrium?
A homogeneous reaction mixture can hardly show macroscopical chaotic behaviour. Well known cyclic counterexamples exist, and practically any reaction which proceeds faster than diffusion or mechanical mixing can homogenise it again (e.g. any reaction that generates a lot of heat!) is liable to show some intermediate chaotic concentration gradients. Its usually hard to notice, and most reactions are perfectly reproducible, if you set them up in the same way (educt impurities!).

If your reaction vessel contains inflows of different chemical composition, then you easily get chaotic behaviour. Think about a tube reactor. I believe chemical engineers are spending a lot of their time trying to control and avoid chaos.