Furan - A Future Fuel and its Lifetime in Urban Air

Abstract: With a rising global mean temperature caused by increased emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere biofuels are considered as a possible solution to the greenhouse effect. One of the potential biofuels is furans and this report aims to determine their lifetime in polluted air. This is done by determining the rate constant of the decay of furan, 2,3-DHF and 2,5-DHF due to reaction with tropospheric ozone. The experiment was performed in a mixture with synthetic air in a 250 L gas cell at 750 torr, 298 K and scanned by a Fourier Transform Infrared spectrometer. Due to experimental difficulties only two of the three examined rate constants could be determined, these were 2.42 and 4.64'10^-18 cm^3/molecules's for furan and 2,5-DHF, respectively. From these results the atmospheric lifetimes was estimated to be 81 and 4 hours for furan and 2,5-DHF, respectively. Due to their completely different lifetimes furan and DHF are estimated to affect the atmosphere on different scales. Furan is predicted to decay first when it leaves the urban areas and is able to react with OH, while DHF will start to decay as soon as it is emitted and is in contact with ozone. Future work is essential in the understanding of how furans influence the atmospheric chemistry.