This work includes two unrelated areas of research. The first portion of this work involved combusting densified refuse derived fuel (dRDF) with coal and studying the effect that Ca(0H)2 binder had on reducing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) and polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) emissions. The second area of work was directed at developing nondestructive infrared techniques in order to aid in the analysis of postage stamp adhesives. With Americans generating 150-200 million tons a year of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) and disposing of nearly ninety percent of it in landfills, it is easy to understand why American landfills are approaching capacity. One alternative to landfilling is to process the MSW into RDF. There are technical and environmental problems associated with RDF. This work provides some answers concerning the amount of PAH and PCB emissions generated via the combustion of RDF with coal. It was found that the Ca(OH)2 binder greatly reduced both the PAH and the PCB emissions. In fact, PAH emissions at the ten-percent level were reduced more by using the binder than by the pollution control equipment. If the Ca(0H)2 binder can reduce not only PAH and PCB emissions, but also other noxious emissions, such as acid gases or dioxin, …

Thermal and flash photolysis studies of ligand-substitution reactions of cis-(pip)(L)M(CO)_4 by L' (pip = piperidine; L, L' = CO, phosphines, phosphites; M = Cr, Mo) implicate square-pyramidal [(L)M(CO)_4], in which L occupies a coordination site in the equatorial plane, as the reactive species. In chlorobenzene (= CB) solvent, the predominant species formed after flash photolysis and a steady-state intermediate for the thermal reaction is cis—[(CB)(L)M(CO)_4], for which rates of CB-dissociation increase with increasing steric demands of coordinated L. Rates of CB-dissociation from trans-[(CB)(L)M(CO)_4] intermediates, formed after photolysis but not thermally, exhibit no observable dependence on the steric properties of the coordinated L.

Certain ligand substitution reactions proceed to a complete displacement of the chelate ligand. Certain reactions proceed through a mechanism involving an initial fission of the tungsten-sulfur bond to afford a coordinatively-unsaturated intermediate which is rapidly attacked by chlorobenzene. The resulting solvated intermediate establishes an equilibrium which involves desolvation-solvation. Although main group organometallic chemistry has received a great deal of attention, this discussion will be centered in organotransition metal chemistry, in particular, metal carbonyls.

One objective of this study was to explore the intramolecular [2+2] cycloadditions of phenoxyketenes to carbonyl groups with isoflavones and benzofurans as target compounds. The other objective was to investigate the eyeloaddition reactions of rarely studied aminoketenes. The conversion of 2-(carboxyalkoxy)benzils to the corresponding phenoxyketenes leads to an intramolecular [2+2] cycloaddition to ultimately yield isoflavones and/or 3-aroylbenzofurans. The product distributions are dependent upon the substitution pattern in the original benzil acids. The initial cycloaddition products, β-lactones, are isolated in some instances while some β-lactones spontaneously underwent decarboxylation and could not be isolated. The ketene intermediate was demonstrated in the intramolecular reaction of benzil acids or ketoacids with sodium acetate and acetic anhydride. It is suggested that sodium acetate and acetic anhydride could serve as a source for the generation of ketenes directly from certain organic acids. The treatment of ketoacids with acetic anhydride and sodium acetate provides a simpler procedure to prepare benzofurans than going through the acid chloride with subsequent triethylamine dehydrochlorination to give the ketenes. N-Ary1-N-alkylaminoketenes were prepared for the first time from the corresponding glycine derivatives by using p-toluenesulfonyl chloride and triethylamine. These aminoketenes underwent in situ cycloadditions with cyclopentadiene, cycloheptene and cyclooctenes to yield only the …

The structures of Diels-Alder cycloaddition of cyclopentadiene to 2,6-dimethyl-p-benzoquinone and methylcyclopentadiene to 2,6-dimethyl-p-benzoquinone were assigned by analysis of 1-D and 2-D proton and carbon-13 NMR spectra. The structures of the cycloadduct of methylcyclopentadiene to 2,6-dimethyl-p-benzoquinone and that of the corresponding intramolecular [2+2] photocyclization product were also obtained by single crystal X-ray structural analysis. As the second part of the study, a new polycyclic "cage" molecule, a substituted trishomocubane isomer, was synthesized. In this synthesis, reductive bond cleavage followed by Dieckmann condensation was employed. Wolff-Kishner reduction then was used to convert a β-keto ester "cage" molecule to the corresponding carboxylic acid. A compound that possesses twofold symmetry was isolated from reaction product mixture. The structure of this compound has been established by single crystal X-ray crystallography.