Chemical Kinetics of Hydrogen Atom Abstraction from Propargyl Sites by Hydrogen and Hydroxy Radicals

Hydrogen atom abstraction from propargyl C-H sites of alkynes plays a critical role in determining the reactivity of alkyne molecules and understanding the formation of soot precursors. This work reports a systematic theoretical study on the reaction mechanisms and rate constants for hydrogen abstraction reactions by hydrogen and hydroxy radicals from a series of alkyne molecules with different structural propargyl C-H atoms. Geometry optimizations and frequency calculations for all species are performed at M06-2X/cc-pVTZ level of theory and the hindered internal rotations are also treated at this level. The high-level W1BD and CCSD(T)/CBS theoretical calculations are used as a benchmark for a series of DFT calculations toward the selection of accurate DFT functionals for large reaction systems in this work. Based on the quantum chemistry calculations, rate constants are computed using the canonical transition state theory with tunneling correction and the treatment of internal rotations. The effects of the structure and reaction site on the energy barriers and rate constants are examined systematically. To the best of our knowledge, this work provides the first systematic study for one of the key initiation abstraction reactions for compounds containing propargyl hydrogen atoms.