Rate constant dependence on the size of aldehydes in the NO3+ aldehydes reaction.: An explanation via quantum chemical calculations and CTST

The reactions of NO3 with formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, propanal, n-butanal, and isobutanal have been modeled using accurate ab initio and hybrid DFT methods with large basis sets. The results clearly indicate that the reaction is a simple aldehydic H atom abstraction; no adduct was found to support the idea of a complex mechanism. Alternative hydrogen abstractions were modeled for the alpha carbon hydrogen atoms and for the C beta of n-butanal; the differences in activation energies ruled out the possibility that competitive abstraction could be responsible for the anomalous increase of the rate constants with the size of aldehydes. The anomalous behavior was found to be a consequence of the preexponential factor increase, due to the enlargement of the internal rotation partition functions with the size of the aldehydes. The reaction rate constants, calculated using the conventional transition-state theory as applied to a proposed simple mechanism, reproduce remarkably well the reported experimental results. Consideration of the internal rotation partition functions is shown to be essential for the determination of the preexponential parameters and thus for the correct calculation of the rate constants. The tunneling correction was found negligible due to the features of the transition vector.