Reaction rates and kinetic isotope effects of H2 + OH → H2O + H

We calculated reaction rate constants including atom tunneling of the reaction of dihydrogen with the hydroxy radical down to a temperature of 50 K. Instanton theory and canonical variational theory with microcanonical optimized multidimensional tunneling were applied using a fitted potential energy surface [J. Chen et al., J. Chem. Phys. 138, 154301 (2013)]. All possible protium/deuterium isotopologues were considered. Atom tunneling increases at about 250 K (200 K for deuterium transfer). Even at 50 K the rate constants of all isotopologues remain in the interval 4 ⋅ 10−20 to 4 ⋅ 10−17 cm3 s−1, demonstrating that even deuterated versions of the title reaction are possibly relevant to astrochemical processes in molecular clouds. The transferred hydrogen atom dominates the kinetic isotope effect at all temperatures.