Water molecular reorientation in ice and tetrahydrofuran clathrate hydrate from lineshape analysis of 17O spin-echo NMR spectra

Abstract

Lineshape analysis of 17O spin-echo NMR spectra has been used to study water molecular reorientations in ice-Ih and THF Structure II clathrate hydrate. The kinetics was determined by the changes of the lineshapes of the 17O central transitions at different temperatures. A model involving 12 orientations and 4-step jumps of water molecular orientations was proposed. Semi-classical exchange formalism was employed to simulate the lineshape of the central transitions of the 17O nuclei. Lineshape analysis gave the quadrupolar coupling constant CQ = 6.43 MHz and the asymmetry parameter η = 0.935, for both ice-Ih and THF gas hydrate. The theoretical lineshape simulations resulted in activation energies of water molecular reorientations Ea = 55.2 ± 2.1 kJ mol–1 and Ea = 30.5 ± 0.8 kJ mol–1 for ice-Ih and THF hydrate, respectively. The range of dynamic rates in THF clathrate hydrate is such that before melting, a pseudo-isotropic lineshape is observed that retains a second-order quadrupolar shift. The water reorientation process is discussed in light of recent results on Bjerrum defect injection obtained from molecular dynamics simulation and structural studies.