A schematic mechanism for hydrocarbon combustion

There are other very important reactions which must be considered. With increasing temperature there is competition between branching resulting from production of ROOH from RO, step 3, and production of alkenes via R  

At low temperatures HO is relatively inert and can be ignored, but at high temperatures it forms hydrogen peroxide by H abstraction from reactant. 

At even higher temperatures H202 can decompose to produce a new branching sequence  

Since a wide variety of products are formed in combustion reactions, many more reactions should be included in the sequence. However, the nine reactions quoted in the simple mechanism are all that is needed to explain cool flame behaviour. This is discussed in the following worked problem. 

In the cool flame episode the total rate of termination can no longer cope with the branching, the production of radicals increases and reaction moves into a cool flame episode. 

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