In complete combustion processes, the products are considered to only be carbon dioxide and water; however, in practice, many other compounds can be produced, lowering the energy efficiency or yield of the process and possibly leading to harmful side products. Some of these side products are polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) that can further react to form soot. This study seeks to investigate the reaction rate for one of the possible reactions for benzene formation – CH radical with cyclopentadiene (c5h6) – a building block in soot formation processes. To accomplish this, laser induced fluorescence is used to measure the kinetic decay of the radical under pseudo first order kinetics at temperatures ranging from 300 to 450 K and pressures between 2 and 10 Torr. From experimentation, an approximate reaction rate of k = 2.4 × 10–10 (± 3 × 10–11) cm3 s–1 was found with benzene being the major product, as determined using photoionization mass spectrometry. In the future, chemical models may be composed combining these data along with other side reactions to get a clearer picture into incomplete combustion processes.

Kinetic investigations of the gas phase reaction between the CH radical and cyclopentadiene

2019 Spring National Meeting

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