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Catalysis and its importance in chemical industry

Posted: Wed Nov 15, 2017 11:21 pm
by bejoy
Reactant needs to overcome specific energy, namely activation energy in respect to form products. The activation energy is the variance within the energy of transition state and the reactant species. Certain reactant molecules have adequate kinetic energy to overcome the energy restriction whereas others don’t. Thus, not all the reactions happen at the same rate in general states. Hence, specific reagents are supplemented that lowers the desired activation energy for converting reactants to products. These chemical reagents are known as catalysts and the method of reducing the activation energy is known ad catalysis.

Distinct Categories of catalysts

1.Heterogeneous catalysts

Heterogeneous catalysts are substances that are in a distinctive than the reactants. For instance, the reagent may be in the solid state whereas the reactants are in a liquid or gas state. Heterogeneous catalyst is the catalytic converter in gasoline or in diesel-fueled cars is one common example.

2.Homogeneous catalysts

Homogeneous catalysts functions as the same phase as the reactants, but the mechanistic principles appealed in heterogeneous catalysis are normally applicable. Usually, homogeneous catalysts is dissolved in a solvent along with the substrates. Common example of homogeneous catalysis includes the effect of H+ by the esterification of carboxylic acids that is the formation of methyl acetate from acetic acid and methanol.

The high-volume process that is requiring a homogeneous catalyst is known as hydroformylation that complements carbon monoxide to an alkene to form an alkyl aldehyde. Aldehyde can be converted to several products that can be alcohols or acids for e.g. detergents or polyols used for plastics such as polycarbonate or polyurethane.

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