Radiolysis of methane. Formation of acetylene

Abstract

The yield and mode of formation of acetylene in the radiolysis of CH4 at atmospheric pressures have been a matter of speculation for many years [1-7]t. Ion pair yields of acetylene varying between 0.0 and 0.25 have been reported in various studies in which the dose rates were in the range 10 15 to 1022 eV/g·s. There are indications that M(C 2H2 )/N + increases with an increase in dose rate [5] or decreases in absorbed dose [1]. Actually, consistently high values for M(C 2H 2}/N+ have recently been reported in studies where a field emission source was employed [6-81 which delivered 3 to 60 ns electron pulses with average dose rates which were about five orders of magnitude higher than those in the linear accelerator studies [5]. In contrast with the lower dose rate studies the agreement between the three Febetron 2 studies r6-81 was excellent;