Abstract
Hydrogen abstraction reactions play a key role in many thermal and catalytic processes involved in the production of fuels and chemicals. In this paper, the reaction barriers and rate constants for the hydrogen abstraction reactions on toluene and tetralin by the benzyl radical are calculated by ab initio methods. These reactions are representatives of similar reactions occurring in the thermolysis of lignin model compounds containing the phenethyl phenyl ether (PPE) structural moiety. Thermolysis of PPE occurs by a free radical chain mechanism in which the product selectivity arises from competitive hydrogen abstraction at the benzylic and nonbenzylic methylen sites by chain carrying benzyl and phenoxyl radicals. The title reactions serve to calibrate the theoretical methods to be used in the study of PPE through comparison of the rate constants and the reaction enthalpies with reliable experimental values. In this study, we used two different hybrid density functionals (BHandHLYP, B3LYP) and second-order perturbation theory to obtain equilibrium and transition state geometries. Multiple transition states were found for both reactions. BHandHLYP underestimates and second-order perturbation theory overestimates the reaction barriers; B3LYP energy barriers agree well with experiment. Absolute and relative rate constants were calculated using transition state theory. We found that the relative rate constant using the B3LYP functional agrees within a factor of 2.0 with experiment at the experimental temperature of 333 K, indicating that the B3LYP functional will be successful in predicting relative rate constants for hydrogen abstraction reactions participating in the pyrolysis of PPE.