Investigation of structural effects of aromatic compounds on sooting tendency with mechanistic insight into ethylphenol isomers

Autor: Seonah Kim, Shubham Vyas, Cameron K. Hays, Brian D. Etz, Robert L. McCormick, Yeonjoon Kim, Brian P. Beekley, Gina M. Fioroni, Peter C. St. John, Charles S. McEnally, Facheng Guo, Lisa D. Pfefferle, Richard A. Messerly
Rok vydání: 2021
Předmět:
Zdroj: Proceedings of the Combustion Institute. 38:1143-1151
ISSN: 1540-7489
Popis: Small aromatic molecules with oxygen-containing functional groups are a promising class of fuel additives, as they can be readily sourced from depolymerized lignin. These oxygenated aromatic compounds (OACs) show a lower sooting tendency than aromatic hydrocarbons, but OACs having alkyl groups such as ethylphenol show a higher sooting tendency than other OACs such as phenol and anisole, despite the oxygen moiety. In this study, we investigate the relationship between chemical structure and soot precursor formation to explain observed differences in the sooting tendency of OACs and to gain insight into how alkyl or oxygenated substituents on the aromatic ring affect soot precursor formation. The weakest bond for 15 aromatic compounds was identified and cleavage of these bonds was shown to generate either benzyl or phenoxy radicals. A linear relationship between standard enthalpy of formation (ΔHfo) of these radicals and the yield sooting index (YSI) was found, and thus ΔHf° can be applied as a metric to estimate YSIs of various aromatic compounds; higher ΔHfo of a radical indicates an increase in the radical reactivity and leads to more soot precursor formation. Flow reactor experiments were performed for 2-ethylphenol and 3-ethylphenol to elucidate how ortho and meta substitution effects the sooting tendency. Soot precursors were identified from the experiment and their formation pathways were investigated computationally. 2-ethylphenol produces more oxygenated products than 3-ethylphenol since the ortho position has increased resonance stabilization of radical intermediates, which leads to lower YSI. These results further inform the selection of potential biomass-derived fuel blendstocks that have favorable sooting tendencies.
Databáze: OpenAIRE