In terms of sooting tendency, the most important observation is that the ringopening pathways to carboxylic acid intermediates (A, C, E, and I) are important for all the lactones. These intermediates are likely to rapidly dissociate to CO2 + a hydrocarbon. Thus, CO2 is a major oxygenated product for abstraction-dominated regime as well as the pure pyrolysis conditions of the ReaxFF MD simulations. This observation suggests that the lactones are likely to have high sooting tendencies relative to the atoms they contain under a wide range of conditions.