Reactivity of Aqueous Phase Hydroxyl Radical with Halogenated Carboxylate Anions: Experimental and Theoretical Studies

With concerns about emerging contaminants increasing, advanced oxidation processes have become attractive technologies because of potential mineralization of these contaminants via radical involved reactions that are induced by highly reactive hydroxyl radical. Considering the expensive and time-consuming experimental studies of degradation intermediates and byproduct, there is a need to develop a first-principles computer-based kinetic model that predict reaction pathways and associated reaction rate constants. In this study, we measured temperature-dependent hydroxyl radical reaction rate constants for a series of haloacetate ions and obtained their Arrhenius kinetic parameters. We found a linear correlation between these reaction rate constants and theoretically calculated aqueous-phase free energies of activation. To understand the quantitative effects on entropy of solvation due to solvent water molecules, we calculate each portion of the entropic energies that contribute to the overall aqueous phase entropy of activation; cavity formation is a dominant portion. For the series of reactions of hydroxyl radical with carboxylate ions, the increase in the entropy of activation during the solvation process is approximately 10-15 cal mol(-1) K-1 because of interaction's with solvent water molecules and the transition state. Finally, charge distribution analysis for the aqueous-phase reactions of hydroxyl radical with acetate/haloacetate ions reveals that in the aqueous phase, the degree of polarizability at the transition state is less substantial than those that are in the gaseous phase resulting in a high charge density. In the presence of electronegative halogenated functional groups, the transition state is less polarized and hydrogen bonding interactions are expected to be weaker.