Thermochemical and Kinetics of the CHOH + (S)N Reactional System.

The reaction of methanol (CHOH) with atomic nitrogen was studied considering three elementary reactions, the hydrogen abstractions from the hydroxyl or methyl groups (R1 and R3, respectively) and the C-O bond break (R2). Thermochemical properties were obtained using ab initio methods and density functional theory approximations with aug-cc-pVXZ (X = T and Q) basis sets. The minimum energy path was built with a dual-level methodology using the BB1K functional as the low-level and the CCSD(T) as the high-level. This surface was used to calculate the thermal rate constants in the frame of variational transitional state theory considering the tunneling effects. Our results indicate the dehydrogenation of the methyl group (R3) as the dominant path with k = 7.5 × 10 cm·molecule·s at 300 K. The thermal rate constants were fitted to a modified Arrhenius equation for use in mechanism studies of the methanol decomposition.