Abstract
If the mechanism of formation of alkenes, the main primary products of the combustion of alkanes above 1000 K, is now well understood, their ways of degradation have been much less studied. Following a previous modeling of the oxidation of propene in a static and a jet‐stirred reactors by using an automatically generated mechanism, the present paper shows new validations of the same mechanism for ignition delays in a shock tube. It also describes the extension of the rules used for the automatic generation to the case of 1‐butene. The predictions of the mechanism produced for the oxidation of 1‐butene are compared successfully with two sets of experimental results: the first obtained in a jet‐stirred reactor between 900 and 1200 K; the second being new measurements of ignitions delays behind reflected shock waves for temperatures from 1200 up to 1670 K, pressures from 6.6 to 8.9 atm, equivalence ratios from 0.5 to 2, and with argon as bath gas. Flux and sensitivity analyses show that the role of termination reactions involving the very abundant allylic radicals is less important for 1‐butene than for propene. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Chem Kinet 34: 666–677, 2002