The gas phase pyrolysis of phenol

✍ Scribed by A. B. Lovell; K. Brezinsky; I. Glassman

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1989
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 623 KB
• Volume: 21
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0538-8066
• DOI: 10.1002/kin.550210706

✦ Synopsis

Phenol pyrolysis has been studied in a turbulent flow reactor by analyzing concentration-time profiles of three major decomposition products: carbon monoxide, cyclopentadiene, and benzene. Experimental conditions were P = 1 atm, T = 1064 -1162 K, and initial phenol concentrations of 500-2016 ppm. The major experimental observations were that the decomposition product profiles were nearly linear as a function of time and that the overall rate of carbon monoxide production was greater than that of cyclopentadiene. The rate difference is explained by a mechanism which includes a radical combination reaction of cyclopentadienyl and phenoxy. With literature and approximate rate coefficient data, the mechanism reproduced the experimental observations very well. The mechanism and data provide estimates of rate coefficients for the phenol decomposition initiation step, abstraction of hydrogen from phenol by cyclopentadienyl, and the phenoxy-cyclopentadienyl combination, all of which have not been available in the literature.