Bimoloacular Reactions of Activated Species: An Analysis of Problematic HC(O)C(O) chemistry

Experimental studies have demonstrated the importance of non-thermal bimolecular association chemistry. Recently a fully reversible method for incorporating any number of such non-thermal reactions into a single master equation has been developed (Green and Robertson, 2014) [10]. Using this methodology experimental results for the system: (1) (CHO)2 + OH → HC(O)C(O) + H2O, (2) HC(O)C(O) → HCO + CO, (3) HC(O)C(O) + O2 → OH + CO + CO2, are modeled, reproducing the temperature and pressure dependence of the OH yield. An issue remains as to how to model energy partition into HC(O)C(O).