Hydrogen bonding of water with aromatic hydrocarbons high temperature and pressure

Infrared spectra of HDO dissolved in benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, o-xylene, m-xylene, and mesitylene at 373-473 K and 100 bar have been measured. It is found that the peak positions of the OH bands assigned to monomeric HDO shift to lower wave numbers as ionization energies of the aromatic compounds decrease. It is concluded that the interaction of water and aromatic compounds in the high temperature-pressure mixtures can be described as pi-hydrogen bonding as for that in their complexes observed in the low temperature matrices and jet-cooled clusters. (C) 1998 American Institute of Physics.