Abstract
The presence of acetonitrile (CH3CN) in the stratosphere has been tentatively inferred1 from measurements of stratospheric positive ions around 36 km. As well as the expected proton hydrates H+(H2O)n′ another ion family was observed to which was assigned the general form, H+Xl(H2O)m′ where X is a molecule of mass 41 ± 1 AMU. If these ions are formed from proton hydrates by reactions involving the unknown trace gas X, the latter must have a proton affinity of ≥ 175 kcal mol−1 and a number density of the order of 105 cm−3 around an altitude of 36 km. Two previously proposed identifications for X—NaOH and MgOH—have recently been excluded by new stratospheric ion composition data3,4 which unambiguously determined the mass of X to be 41 AMU and failed to show H+Xl(H2O)m ions containing the Mg isotopes 25 and 26. Another suggestion1 that X might be acetonitrile (CH3CN) has been criticized on the grounds that it is difficult to explain its presence in the stratosphere2. We now report laboratory studies of clustering equilibria for H+(CH3CN)l(H2O)m ions, which further support identification of X as acetonitrile.
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Böhringer, H., Arnold, F. Acetonitrile in the stratosphere—implications from laboratory studies. Nature 290, 321–322 (1981). https://doi.org/10.1038/290321a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/290321a0
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