Computational study on the reaction of atomic chlorine with 1,2-dibromoethane (CH2BrCH2Br)

In this work, the reaction mechanism and kinetics of Cl + CH2BrCH2Br → products are theoretically investigated for the first time. The optimized geometries and frequencies of all of the stationary points and selected points along the minimum-energy path for the three hydrogen abstraction channels and two bromine abstraction channels are calculated at the BH&H-LYP level with the 6-311G** basis set and the energy profiles are further calculated at the CCSD(T) level of theory. The rate constants are evaluated using the conventional transition-state theory, the canonical variational transition-state theory, and the canonical variational transition-state theory with a small-curvature tunneling correction over the temperature range 200–1000 K. The results show that reaction channel 3 is the primary channel and the calculated rate constants are in good agreement with available experimental values. The three-parameter Arrhenius expression for the total rate constants over 200–1000 K is provided.