sábado, 28 de setembro de 2013

Catalysts

Okay, we've learned that some reactions are very slow. They may take hours, days, weeks, and even years to be completed. But how does it affect the economy?

Yes, economy. We know that many things we use are produced through industrial application. Thus, the slowness of a reaction would make impossible to have any kind of profit in the production of these products.

So how on earth do the guys that work in industry manage to accelerate this reactions?

They use something very important for our daily-basis called catalyst.

But what is catalyst?

Well, catalyst is a substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction without being consumed by the reaction.

Catalyst is not only important in industry, but it also play a very important role in our body.

And how does it work?

It basically provide an alternative pathway for a reaction to occur.

This pathway has a smaller activation energy requirement, even though it reacts the same substances and have the same enthalpy change as the uncatalyzed reaction. 

This happens because the catalyst takes part of the reaction, but it is regenerated unchanged at the end of the reaction.

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