The mechanisms and kinetics of the gas phase reactions that the hydrogen atom in formyl fluoride （FCHO） abstracted by OH in the presence of water, formic acid （FA）, or sulfuric acid （SA） are theoretically investigated at the CCSD（T）/6-311＋＋G（3df, 3pd）//MO6-2X/6- 311＋＋G（3df, 3pd） level of theory. The calculated results show that the barriers of the transition states involving catalysts are lowered to -2.89, -6.25, and -7.76 kcal/mol from 3.64 kcal/mol with respect to the separate reactants, respectively, which reflects that those catalysts play an important role in reducing the barrier of the hydrogen abstraction reaction of FCHO with OH. Additionally, using conventional transition state theory with Eckart tun- neling correction, the kinetic data demonstrate that the entrance channel X…FCHO＋OH （X=H2O, FA, or SA） is significantly more favorable than the pathway X…OH＋FCHO. More- over, the rate constants of the reactions of FCHO with OH radical with H2O, FA, or SA introduced are computed to be smaller than that of the naked OH＋FCHO reaction because the concentration of the formed X…FCHO or X…OH complex is quite low in the atmosphere.
The G3 and CBS-QB3 theoretical methods are employed to study the decomposition of CF3OH into FCFO and HF by water, water dimmer, and ammonia. The decomposition of CF3OH into FCFO and HF is unlikely to occur in the atmosphere due to the high activated energy of 88.7 k J/mol at the G3 level of theory. However, the computed results predict that the barrier for unimolecular decomposition of CF3OH is decreased to 25.1 kJ/mol from 188.7 k J/mol with the aid of NH3 at the G3 level of theory, which shows that the ammonia play a strong catalytic effect on the split of CF3OH. In addition, the calculated rate constants show that the decomposition of CF3OH by NH3 is faster than those of H2O and the water dimmer by 10^9 and 10^5 times respectively. The rate constants combined with the corresponding concentrations of these species demonstrate that the reaction CF3OH with NH3 via TS4 is of great importance for the decomposition of CF3OH in the atmosphere.
