New technique for generating high concentrations of gaseous OH radicals in relative rate measurements

Abstract

AbstractWe have developed a technique for generating high concentrations of gaseous OH radicals in a reaction chamber. The technique, which involves the UV photolysis of O3 in the presence of water vapor, was used in combination with the relative rate method to obtain rate constants for reactions of OH radicals with selected species. A key improvement of the technique is that an O3/O2 (3%) gas mixture is continuously introduced into the reaction chamber, during the UV irradiation period. An important feature is that a high concentration of OH radicals [(0.53–1.2) × 1011 radicals cm−3] can be produced during the irradiation in continuous, steady‐state experiment. Using the new technique in conjunction with the relative rate method, we obtained the rate constant for the reaction of CHF3 (HFC‐23) with OH radicals, k1. We obtained k1(298 K) = (3.32 ± 0.20) × 10−16 and determined the temperature dependence of k1 to be (0.48 ± 0.13) × 10−12 exp[−(2180 ± 100)/T] cm3 molecule−1 s−1 at 253–328 K using CHF2CF3 (HFC‐125) and CHF2Cl (HCFC‐22) as reference compounds in CHF3–reference–H2O gas mixtures. The value of k1 obtained in this study is in agreement with previous measurements of k1. This result confirms that our technique for generating OH radicals is suitable for obtaining OH radical reaction rate constants of ∼10−16 cm3 molecule−1 s−1, provided the rate constants do not depend on pressure. In addition, it also needed to examine whether the reactions of sample and reference compound with O3 interfere the measurement when selecting this technique. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Chem Kinet 35: 317–325, 2003