Facts at Your Fingertips: Catalysis Fundamentals
Facts at Your Fingertips: Catalysis Fundamentals
Facts at Your Fingertips: Catalysis Fundamentals
Catalysis Fundamentals
Department Editor: Scott Jenkins
Catalyst basics
A catalyst interacts with chemical reactants to increase the reaction rate.
Catalysts form fleeting intermediate
chemical complexes with reactants,
allowing the reaction to follow a different mechanistic pathway that requires
lower activation energy (Ea) than the
corresponding uncatalyzed reaction.
Ea is often thought of as an energy
barrier over which the reactants must
pass to form products. Activation
energies are often shown on graphs
that plot reaction coordinate against
thermodynamic free energy (Figure).
Reaction coordinates are one-dimensional representations of the progress
of a chemical reaction.
Catalysts are broadly categorized
as homogeneous or heterogeneous.
Homogeneous refers to those catalysts that are dissolved in the reaction medium, forming a single phase
with the reactants. Heterogeneous
catalysts exist as a distinct phase
from the reaction mixture and are often porous solid particles.
Both categories are important for
industrial chemistry. Examples of liquid-phase, acid-base-catalyzed reactions include hydrolysis of esters and
amides, enolization of aldehydes and
ketones, esterification of alcohols,
halogenation of acetone and others.
Heterogeneous catalysts play a key
role in the production of petrochemicals, including cracking, alkylation,
polymerization, isomerization, dehydrogenation and many others.
Mechanism of action
Most chemical reactions involve simultaneous (rather than sequential) bond
breaking and bond forming. Along
the pathway of reactants to products,
the molecules adopt a configuration
that represents the highest potential
energy state, known as the transition
CHEMICAL ENGINEERING
Catalyst features
Increasing energy
Ea for uncatalysed reaction
Energy, kJ
Ea3
Ea2
Ea1
Reactants
H for both
catalyzed and
uncatalyzed
reactions
Products
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MAY 2015
Reaction coordinate
Influencing factors
The following are factors that can play
a large role in determining which step
is more or less significant:
Fluid-dynamic factors
Catalyst properties (such as particle size, porosity, pore geometry
and surface characteristics)
Diffusion characteristics of fluid reactants and products
Activation energy requirements for
adsorption and desorption of reactants and products to and from
solid surfaces
Overall Ea of the catalyzed reaction
Thermal factors (temperature and
heat-transport characteristics)
References
1) Perry, R.H. and Green, D.W., Perrys Chemical Engineering Handbook, 7th ed., McGraw Hill Professional,
Section 4, Chapter 12. 1997.
2) Wijngaarden, R.J. and others, Industrial Catalysis: Optimizing Catalysts and Processes, Wiley-VCH, Weinheim,
Germany, 1999.
3) University of Texas, Chemistry 302. Course material on
chemical kinetics. Accessed from ch302.cm.utexas.
edu, April 2015.
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