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What is a catalyst? A catalyst is a substance which speeds up reactions, but is chemically unchanged at the end of the reaction. When the reaction has finished, you would have the exact mass of catalyst as you had at the beginning.
How do catalysts work? When a homogeneous catalyst is present, one of the reactants (substrate) reacts with the catalyst, forming an intermediate product. The intermediate product then reacts with the other reactant to form the final product. The activation energies of both of these steps is lower than the activation energy without the presence of a catalyst, therefore more molecules will have the energy to react using the catalyst, and therefore the rate of reaction is increased.
Catalysts
What are they used for? -For chemists to find a new way to make a new chemical in the lab, it could take hours or days for the reaction to be complete. Unless the reaction can be sped up significantly, no one will ever mass-produce the chemical because the cost would be too high. This is where catalysts come in. Because catalysts speed up reactions and do not take place in the reaction itself, a lot of research time for a given chemical time is spent on catalyst research. The most tightly guarded industrial secrets are catalysts compositions on recipes. Often many companies will be production he same chemical, however because one company has a better catalyst, they can sell their product at a lower cost and gain more in the market.
Examples of Catalysts: Manganese dioxide, used to decompose Hydrogen Peroxide to Oxygen and Water. Sulfuric Acid is used to dehydrate Ethanol to Ethylene. Zeolite is a catalyst used to crack crude oil.
