Journal of Physical Chemistry A, Vol.118, No.46, 10982-11001, 2014
Hydroxyalkoxy Radicals: Importance of Intramolecular Hydrogen Bonding on Chain Branching Reactions in the Combustion and Atmospheric Decomposition of Hydrocarbons
During both the atmospheric oxidation and combustion of volatile organic compounds, sequential addition of oxygen can lead to compounds that contain multiple hydrogen-bonding sites. The presence of two or more of these sites on a hydrocarbon introduces the possibility of intramolecular H-bonding, which can have a stabilizing effect on the reactants, products, and transition states of subsequent reactions. The present work compares the absolute energies of two sets of conformations, those that contain intramolecular H-bonds and those that lack intramolecular H-bonds, for each reactant, product, and transition state species in the 1,2 through 1,7 H-migrations and C alpha C beta, C alpha H, and C alpha OH-bond scission reactions in the n-hydroxyeth-1-oxy through n-hydroxyhex-1-oxy radicals, for n ranging from 1 to 6. The difference in energy between the two conformations represents the balance between the stabilizing effects of H-bonds and the steric cost of bringing the two H-bonding sites together. The effect of intramolecular H-bonding and the OH group is assessed by comparing the net intramolecular H-bond stabilization energies, the reaction enthalpies, and barrier heights of the n-hydroxyalkoxy radical reactions with the corresponding alkoxy radicals values. The results suggest that there is a complex dependence on the location of the two H-bonding groups, the location of the abstraction or bond scission, and the shape of the transition state that dictates the extent to which intramolecular H-bonding effects the relative importance of H-migration and bond scission reactions for each n-hydroxyalkoxy radical. These findings have important implications for future studies on hydrocarbons with multiple H-bonding sites.