Dimethyl ether is under consideration as an alternative diesel fuel. Its combustion chemistry is as yet ill-characterized. Here we use Born-Oppenheimer molecular dynamics (BOMD) based on DFT-B3LYP forces to investigate the short-time dynamics of selected features of the low-temperature dimethyl ether (DME) oxidation potential energy surface. Along the chain propagation pathway, we run BOMD simu...

Using a conditioning paradigm, the olfactory sensitivity of CD-1 mice for a homologous series of aliphatic n-carboxylic acids (ethanoic acid to n-octanoic acid) and several of their isomeric forms was investigated. With all 14 odorants, the animals significantly discriminated concentrations as low as 0.03 ppm (parts per million) from the solvent, and with four odorants the best-scoring animals ...

The effect of short-chain branching (SCB) on the persistence length lp of polyethylene (PE) was studied using small-angle neutron scattering (SANS). In thermodynamically good solvents, lp can be measured directly from the scattering vector qtr at the crossover from good solvent mass-fractal scaling to the rodlike persistent scaling, using the unified equation described in the text. The method w...

The mechanism of the low temperature oxidation of gaseous acetaldehyde was investigated in the temperature range of 1 50-400?°C. The minor, intermediate and major products were identified and measured quantitatively by sampling directly into the ionization chamber of an MS10-C2 mass spectrometer from the reactor. The formation of H2O, CO, CO2, HCOOH, H2, HCHO, CH3COOH and CH3OH as the major pro...

The physical properties of a polyethylene resin are mainly though not exclusively dependent on basic molecular properties such as short chain branching, average molecular weight and molecular weight distribution. These basic properties in turn are controlled by the size, structure and uniformity of the polyethylene molecules. Ethylene is a gaseous hydrocarbon composed of two carbon atoms and fo...