PREFACE
Polynuclear Aromatic Compounds Downloaded from pubs.acs.org by 80.82.77.83 on 05/28/18. For personal use only.
P O L Y N U C L E A R A R O M A T I C H Y D R O C A R B O N S and heterocycles
are quite
abundant in fossil fuel materials such as coal and petroleum, and insights into new chemistry can potentially lead to developments in the areas of fuels, lubricants, chemicals, and carbonaceous materials. The study of large aromatic hydrocarbons is long-standing, and the symposium upon which this book is based was held on the 30th anniversary of a symposium, "Polycyclic Hydrocarbons", held in Atlantic City in Septem ber 1956 and published in Volume 1 of the Preprints of the Petroleum Division. We are fortunate to have as one of the contributors to this book, Michael Szwarc, who was an author of one of the papers of the 1956 symposium ("Reactivities of Deformed Aromatic Hydrocarbons"). The objective of this book is to present accounts of current research in polynuclear aromatic compounds, showing examples of studies both of pure compounds and of complex, fossil fuel related mixtures. This book is necessarily topical, and we do not seek an encyclopedic coverage as may be found in Clars Polycyclic Hydrocarbons or Rodd's Chemistry of Carbon Compounds. T h e combination of basic and applied work is deliberate, for there is opportunity for cross-over in both directions. Such a combination could be viewed as a loss in focus; as an example, a reviewer of the book Chemistry of Engine Combustion Deposits termed a chapter on the chemistry of aromatic hydrocarbons "of marginal relevance" even though the engine deposits are 90% aromatic carbon. However, in the economic climate of the 1980s, investigators in both the basic and applied sciences need to be ever more closely linked to ensure their mutual success! Coverage of aromatic chemistry in the book includes reduction, oxidation, and thermal reactions, with applications developed for both coal and petroleum materials. Other topics include quantum chemical structure-reactivity relationships, spatial configurations of large poly nuclear hydrocarbons, cyclophanes, and desulfurization of heterocycles. The first and the last chapters touch on new frontiers i n aromatic compounds, including the proposed C cluster ("buckminsterfullerane") and extensions to hydrogen-poor benzenoid materials, such as calcined petroleum coke and graphite. In the future, the chemistry of polynuclear aromatic compounds promises to be of relevance to exciting materials areas, including amorphous carbon and dense, "diamondlike" films (J. Robertson and E . P. O'Reilly, Phys. Rev. B, 1987,35, 2946). e o
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M u c h activity in aromatic hydrocarbons and carbonaceous materials is occurring outside of the United States, and we were fortunate to have the support of the Petroleum Research Fund (Grant 18537-SE) and the Exxon Education Foundation to bring foreign speakers to Anaheim for the symposium upon which this book is based. Finally, in bringing this book into existence, we thank the A C S Books Department, especially the editors who worked so hard, Robin Giroux, Karen McCeney, and Barbara Libengood.
Polynuclear Aromatic Compounds Downloaded from pubs.acs.org by 80.82.77.83 on 05/28/18. For personal use only.
L A W R E N C E B.
EBERT
Corporate Research Laboratories Exxon Research and Engineering Company Annandale, NJ 08801 August 1987
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