  Finite-dimensional dissipative dynamical systems with multiple time-scales
are obtained when modeling chemical reaction kinetics with ordinary
differential equations. Such stiff systems are computationally hard to solve
and therefore, optimal control problems which contain ordinary differential
equations as infinitesimal constraints are even more difficult to handle. Model
reduction might offer an approach to improve numerical efficiency as well as
avoiding stiffness of such models. We show in this paper in benchmark fashion
how attracting manifold computation methods could be exploited to solve optimal
control more efficiently while having in mind the ambitious long-term goal to
apply them to real-time control problems in chemical kinetics.
