Scientists Detect Common Intermediates in Flames

摘要

Understanding fire is one of the oldest challenges posed to chemists worldwide. Even after 150 years of the flame chemistry research, scientists are making new findings. An international research consortium, including CAS researchers, discovered for the first time in their experiments a class of important intermediates of hydrocarbon oxidation- enols-that is apparently common in flames. The discovery was made through a cooperation among researchers from the US, China and Germany. Prof. Qi Fei, Sheng Liusi and Zhang Yunwu from the CAS-affiliated University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) are key players of the team. The experiments were conduced at the Advanced Light Source facility at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (NSRL) at USTC. Their findings were published online by the Science magazine on May 12.