Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 April 2006
For a reactive solute, with weak second-order recombination, an investigation is made of the near-source behaviour (where concentrations are high), and of the far field (where the recombination has an accumulative effect). Despite the loss of material and increased spread due to recombination, the far-field concentration distribution is shown to be nearly Gaussian. This permits a simplified (Gaussian) treatment of the chemical nonlinearity. Explicit solutions are given for the total amount of solute, variance and kurtosis for solutes with no first-order reactions.