Direct dynamics study on hydrogen abstraction reaction of CF₃CHOHCF₃ with OH radical

Dual-level direct dynamics method is employed to investigate the H-abstraction reaction CF₃CHOHCF₃ with OH radical. Two hydrogen-abstraction reaction channels are possible: one from the methylene (-CH-) position and the other from the hydroxyl (-OH) position. The minimum energy path is calculated at the B3LYP/6-311G(d,p) level, and the energetic information is further refined by a new powerful and inexpensive BMC-CCSD method. To testify the accuracy of the structures and the energies, the recently developed hybrid density functional theory BB1K and higher level MC-QCISD are applied to this system. Hydrogen-bonded complexes are presented at both reactants and products sides of these two channels, which indicating that the reaction may proceed via an indirect mechanism. The rate constants for each reaction channel are evaluated by canonical variational transition state theory (CVT) with a small-curvature tunneling correction (SCT) over a wide range of temperatures from 200 to 2000 K. The calculated CVT/SCT rate constants are in good agreement with the available experimental values in the temperature region 250-430 K. The present results indicate that the two channels are competitive. At lower temperature, the reaction occurs mainly via the hydroxyl-H-abstraction channel, while the methylene-H-abstraction channel is preferred when the temperature is higher than 273 K.