The pyrolysis of neopentane experimental facts

1 - The pyrolysis of neopentane experimental facts a) Experimental studies 

This reaction has been studied using batch reactors, perfectly stirred continuous reactors, tubular continuous reactors, BENSON type reactors, wall-less reactors and shock tubes. The reaction has been carried out at temperatures between 700 and 1300 K, at pressures of 0.1 Pa to 10 Pa and at reaction times of 10 s to 10 s. The effects of the nature and of the area of the reactor walls as well as those of various additives have also been studied. The diversity of the studies carried out by a dozen teams throughout the world, the particularly widespread range of operating conditions (600 K for the temperature, which represents 11 orders of magnitude for the rate of initiation, 8 orders of magnitude for the pressure and reaction duration) make the pyrolysis of neopentane into a model radical reaction. 

There is a quasi-general agreement amongst all the experimentalists about the identity of the products of the reaction and about their primary or secondary nature. The primary products include isobutene, methane, hydrogen and ethane, the secondary products include methyl-2 butene-1, propene, ethylene, allene, isoprene, propyne and methyl-2 butene-2, classed by decreasing order of importance. 

The relative importance of the primary products varies much with the temperature  

The reaction has been studied by changing the nature and the surface/volume ratio of the reactor walls. The effects of these factors on the chemistry or on the kinetics are not very pronounced. Therefore, the reaction must be considered to be essentially homogeneous. The agreement between the results obtained using very different reactors confirms this. 

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