Relative energetics of CH3CH2O, CH3CHOH, and CH2CH2OH radical products from ethanol dehydrogenation.

This study has examined the relative energetics of nine stationary points associated with the three different radical isomers generated by removing a H atom from ethanol at the O atom (ethoxy, CH3CH2O), the α C atom (CH3CHOH), and the β C atom (CH2CH2OH). For the first time, CCSD(T) geometry optimizations and harmonic vibrational frequency computations with the cc-pVTZ and aug-cc-pVTZ basis sets have been carried out to characterize two unique minima for each isomer along with three transition state structures with Cs symmetry. Explicitly correlated CCSD(T) computations were also performed to estimate the relative energetics of these nine stationary points near the complete basis set limit. These benchmark results were used to assess the performance of various density functional theory (DFT) and wave function theory methods, and they will help guide method selection for future studies of alcohols and their radicals. The structures generated by abstracting H from the α C atom have significantly lower electronic energies (by at least 7 kcal mol−1) than the CH3CH2O and CH2CH2OH radicals. Although previously reported as a minimum on the ground-state surface, the 2A″ Cs structure of the ethoxy radical was found to be a transition state in this study with MP2, CCSD(T), and a number of DFT methods. An implicit solvation model used in conjunction with DFT and MP2 methods did not qualitatively change the relative energies of the isomers, but the results suggest that the local minima for the CH3CHOH and CH2CH2OH radicals could become more energetically competitive in condensed phase environments, such as liquid water and ethanol.