Reaction of O atoms with cyanides

The study of the reaction of atomic O with cyanogen began, as was the case with many of the other reactions discussed in this review, with the classic studies of Harteck and co-workers in the 1930 s. Harteck and Kopsch reported that cyanogen, like HCN, reacted only slowly with O atoms, emitting a violet light and forming CO2, H2O and NO as reaction products. They observed only 4 % conversion in their flow system. 

In the 1950 s, work in this area was concerned primarily with the grosser features of cyanogen-oxygen flames, and did not lead to quantitative information which could help to determine the kinetics and mechanism of the reaction . 

82X 10 l.inole. sec at 1.85 and 4.9 torr, respectively. This behavior could not be explained. It was not possible for them to determine unequivocally the nature of the initial reaction between O atoms and cyanogen, reaction (21). Either the sequence 

The behavior of the CN emission intensity indicated that CN reached a steady-state concentration, suggesting that some reaction was consuming it. Setser and Thrush pointed out that this could be due to the reaction with NO 

In these papers Setser and Thrush concluded that the electronically excited levels of CN responsible for the red and violet emission were populated by three-body atom recombinations, such as reaction (26) or, less likely, reaction (27) 

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