Bond energies in polyunsaturated acids and kinetics of co-oxidation of protiated and deuterated acids

Resumo

A computational program specially designed to analyze co-oxidation of substances in mixtures is suggested. The rigorous kinetic scheme of 32 reactions describing co-oxidation of isotope differing polyunsaturated fatty acids was computed to enlighten experimentally detected enormously large H/D isotope effects. The latter were shown to depend on the kinetic chain length and exhibit two extreme regimes of short and long chains which characterize isotope effects on the initiation and propagation chain reactions of hydrogen (deuterium) atom abstraction. No protective effect of deuterated polyunsaturated acids on the oxidation of protiated acids was detected. Protective effect of the deuterated compounds on the biologically important processes seems to be induced by the low yield of products formed in the chain termination reactions due to the low rate of initiation by deuterated compounds.