Topical Review

Electron impact ionization and fragmentation of biofuels^⋆

¹ Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, Juiz de Fora, MG 36036-900, Brazil
² Wolverhampton School of Sciences, University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton WV1 1LY, UK
³ College of Science and Engineering, Flinders University, GPO Box 2100, Adelaide, SA 5001, Australia
⁴ Instituto Federal do Sul de Minas Gerais, Campus Poços de Caldas, Poços de Caldas, MG 37713-100, Brazil
⁵ Instituto de Física Fundamental, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Serrano 113-bis, 28006 Madrid, Spain
⁶ Departamento de Estructura de la Materia, Física Térmica y Electrónica, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain
⁷ Dept of Actuarial Science and Applied Statistics, Faculty of Business and Information Science, UCSI University, Kuala Lumpur 56000, Malaysia

^a e-mail: cristina.lopes@ufjf.edu.br

Received: 30 September 2019
Received in final form: 19 March 2020
Published online: 5 May 2020

Abstract

We present in this article, a review of our recent experimental and theoretical studies published in the literature on electron impact ionization and fragmentation of the primary alcohols methanol, ethanol, 1-propanol and 1-butanol (C₁–C₄). We discuss the mass spectra (MS) of these alcohols, measured for the electron impact energy of 70 eV and also, total (TICS) and partial (PICS) ionization cross sections in the energy range from 10 to 100 eV, which revealed the probability of forming different cations, by either direct or dissociative ionization. These experimental TICS are summarized together with theoretical values, calculated using the Binary-encounter Bethe (BEB) and the independent atom model with the screening corrected additivity rule (IAM-SCAR) methods. Additionally, we compared data of appearance energies – AE and discussed the application of the extended Wannier theory to PICS in order to produce the ionization and ionic fragmentation thresholds for the electron impact of these alcohols.