  Chemical reactions modeled by ordinary differential equations are
finite-dimensional dissipative dynamical systems with multiple time-scales.
They are numerically hard to tackle -- especially when they enter an optimal
control problem as "infinite-dimensional" constraints. Since discretization of
such problems usually results in high-dimensional nonlinear problems, model
(order) reduction via slow manifold computation seems to be an attractive
approach. We discuss the use of slow manifold computation methods in order to
solve optimal control problems more efficiently having real-time applications
in view.
