Compilation and evaluation of gas phase diffusion coefficients of halogenated organic compounds

Abstract

Organic halogens are of great environmental and climatic concern. In this work, we have compiled their gas phase diffusivities (pressure-normalized diffusion coefficients)in a variety of bath gases experimentally measured by previous studies. It is found that diffusivities estimated using Fuller's semi-empirical method agree very well with measured values for organic halogens. In addition, we find that at a given temperature and pressure, different molecules exhibit very similar mean free paths in the same bath gas, and then propose a method to estimate mean free paths in different bath gases. For example, the pressure-normalized mean free paths are estimated to be 90, 350, 90, 80, 120nm atm in air (and N2/O2), He, argon, CO2 and CH4, respectively, with estimated errors of around ±25%. A generic method, which requires less input parameter than Fuller's method, is proposed to calculate gas phase diffusivities. We find that gas phase diffusivities in He (and air as well)calculated using our method show fairly good agreement with those measured experimentally and estimated using Fuller'smethod. Ourmethod is particularly useful for the estimation of gas phase diffusivitieswhen the trace gas contains atoms whose diffusion volumes are not known.