Effects of Oxygen: Experimental and VTST/DFT Studies on Cumene Autoxidation with Air under Atmospheric Pressure

The mechanism of how oxygen affects cumene autoxidation related to temperature is still bewildering. Kinetic analysis of cumene autoxidation with air at a pressure of 1.0 atm was investigated by experiments and variational transition state theory/DFT. Oxygen was the limiting factor for cumene autoxidation above 100 °C, although it had negligible impacts on cumene autoxidation at 70-100 °C. The kinetic analysis by VTST coupled with DFT calculations proved that {k6,reverse[ROO•]}/{k7,forward[RH]0 [ROO•]} > 103 (70-120 °C), suggesting that ROO• tended to decompose back to R• and O2 rapidly, whereas it was much slower for ROO• abstracting a hydrogen atom from RH to form ROOH. When the concentration of oxygen was higher than the critical value ([O2]critical), it could not significantly affect the equilibrium concentration of ROO•, which in turn could not affect the autoxidation rate significantly. Besides, the critical oxygen concentration ([O2]critical) was exponentially related to 1/T, which was consistent with Hattori's experimental results.