Hydrogen, tropospheric radical

Nitrogen oxides (NOx= N02 and nitrogen monoxide NO) sources are mainly emitting NO into the troposphere. Thai, NO may be converted to N02 by reaction with hydrogen peroxy radical (H02) or with higher peroxy radicals (R02), produced from hydrocarbon oxidation. 

In the troposphere, ozone can be converted to O2 by the following reaction with hydrogen oxide radicals ... 

R is hydrogen, alkenyl, or alkyne. In remote tropospheric air where NO concentrations ate sometimes quite low, HO2 radicals can react with ozone (HO2 + O3 — HO + 2 O2) and result in net ozone destmction rather than formation. The ambient ozone concentration depends on cloud cover, time of day and year, and geographical location. 

NMHC. A large number of hydrocarbons are present in petroleum deposits, and their release during refining or use of fuels and solvents, or during the combustion of fuels, results in the presence of more than a hundred different hydrocarbons in polluted air (43,44). These unnatural hydrocarbons join the natural terpenes such as isoprene and the pinenes in their reactions with tropospheric hydroxyl radical. In saturated hydrocarbons (containing all single carbon-carbon bonds) abstraction of a hydrogen (e,g, R4) is the sole tropospheric reaction, but in unsaturated hydrocarbons HO-addition to a carbon-carbon double bond is usually the dominant reaction pathway. 

Photolysis of an aqueous solution containing chloroform (314 pmol) and the catalyst [Pt(cohoid)/Ru(bpy) /MV/EDTA] yielded the following products after 15 h (mol detected) chloride ions (852), methane (265), ethylene (0.05), ethane (0.52), and unreacted chloroform (10.5) (Tan and Wang, 1987). In the troposphere, photolysis of chloroform via OH radicals may yield formyl chloride, carbon monoxide, hydrogen chloride, and phosgene as the principal products (Spence et al., 1976). Phosgene is hydrolyzed readily to hydrogen chloride and carbon dioxide (Morrison and Boyd, 1971). 

Photolytic. Irradiation of vinyl chloride in the presence of nitrogen dioxide for 160 min produced formic acid, HCl, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, ozone, and trace amounts of formyl chloride and nitric acid. In the presence of ozone, however, vinyl chloride photooxidized to carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, formic acid, and small amounts of HCl (Gay et al, 1976). Reported photooxidation products in the troposphere include hydrogen chloride and/or formyl chloride (U.S. EPA, 1985). In the presence of moisture, formyl chloride will decompose to carbon monoxide and HCl (Morrison and Boyd, 1971). Vinyl chloride reacts rapidly with OH radicals in the atmosphere. Based on a reaction rate of 6.6 x lO" cmVmolecule-sec, the estimated half-life for this reaction at 299 K is 1.5 d (Perry et al., 1977). Vinyl chloride reacts also with ozone and NO3 in the gas-phase. Sanhueza et al. (1976) reported a rate constant of 6.5 x 10 cmVmolecule-sec for the reaction with OH radicals in air at 295 K. Atkinson et al. (1988) reported a rate constant of 4.45 X 10cmVmolecule-sec for the reaction with NO3 radicals in air at 298 K. 

As seen in Table 6.1, the reactions of the nitrate radical with the simple aromatic hydrocarbons are generally too slow to be important in the tropospheric decay of the organic. However, one of the products of the aromatic reactions, the cresols, reacts quite rapidly with NO,. o-Cresol, for example, reacts with N03 with a room temperature rate constant of 1.4 X 10 " cm3 molecule-1 s-1, giving a lifetime for the cresol of only 1 min at 50 ppt N03. This rapid reaction is effectively an overall hydrogen abstraction from the pheno-... 

The hydroxyl radical is normally present only in low concentrations in the troposphere, as it reacts with further ozone to form the hydroperoxy radical HOO- which in turn gives hydrogen peroxide H202. Ozone, the hydroxyl radical, and hydrogen peroxide are the main oxidizing species in the troposphere, from the standpoint of environmental chemistry. The hydroxyl radical in particular performs an important function as a natural cleansing agent for the atmosphere.26 In elevated concentrations, however,... 

Peroxy radicals are also formed in the troposphere through the photolysis of aldehydes (10, 11) and through nitrate radical (N03) reactions (12-14). The hydrogen atom and formyl radical that are formed then react with molecular oxygen (02) (reactions 11 and 12) under tropospheric conditions. 

Tropospheric 03 is a secondary constituent formed by chemical reactions in the atmosphere involving several precursors (NOx, hydrocarbons and CO). The concentrations of these precursors are controlled by the atmospheric oxidation processes, which are regulated by hydrogen radicals OH and H02. 

Hydrogen peroxide is an interesting molecule from both structural and chemical point of view. It is chemically the smallest molecule showing internal rotation. It is an important constituent of troposphere and stratosphere, the recombination ofthe two HO2 radicals being the main cause otTLC formation in atmosphere. It is related to acid rain formation by the oxidation of SO2 by H2O2 either in gas phase or in a water droplet [1-4]. Techniques for the detection of H2O2 can be... 

In the troposphere ozone is produced by photodissociation (equation 3) not of 02 but of N02, initiated with wavelengths <410 nm, followed by recombination (equation 2) with 02. In the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere the photolysis of ozone (equation 4) yields excited-state oxygen atoms which react with water to produce hydroxyl radicals (equation 5). These are crucial to the removal of organic compounds from the troposphere, since they readily abstract hydrogen atoms (equation 6) to yield organic radicals which subsequently undergo further oxidative degradation. 

The atmospheric fate of a halocarbon molecule depends upon whether or not it contains a hydrogen atom. Hydrohalomethanes are oxidized by a series of reactions with radicals prominant in the troposphere, predominantly hydroxyl OH. Fully halogenated methanes are unreactive towards these radicals and consequently are transported up through the troposphere into the stratosphere, where their oxidation is initiated by UV photolysis of a carbon-halogen bond. 

The oxidation scheme for halomethanes not containing a hydrogen atom is similar to that for those which do, except that it is not initiated by tropospheric reaction with hydroxyl radicals, since the fully halogenated methanes are unreactive. Consequently, substantial amounts of CFCs and halons are transported intact up into the stratosphere, where they absorb UV radiation of short wavelength and undergo photodissociation (equation 36) to a halogen atom and a trihalomethyl radical. The halogen atom Y may enter into catalytic cycles for ozone destruction, as discussed in the introduction. 

Carbonyl halides containing a hydrogen atom are likely to undergo reaction in the troposphere with hydroxyl radicals, which dominate the day-time chemistry. Reaction 37 of carbonyl halides CHXO (where X = F or Cl) may occur by two mechanisms (i) direct hydrogen abstraction or (ii) radical addition to carbonyl. 

Although the gas phase provides major pathway for hydroxyl radical and hydrogen peroxide production in the atmosphere, there is overwhelming evidence [158-168] that aqueous phases in the troposphere also provides a significant medium for the photolytic production of these important oxidants. 

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