When you talk about chem­i­cal process­es, most peo­ple are unaware of exact­ly how they tend to take place. One of the most impor­tant fea­ture to keep in mind about chem­i­cal reac­tions is Cat­a­lysts. You must have heard of them through­out your life but what exact­ly are they ? Well, in the sim­plest words, they are the agents respon­si­ble for doing noth­ing oth­er than speed­ing up the reac­tion process­es. Cat­a­lysts don’t real­ly take part in the reac­tions, which means that they, them­selves are not affect­ed by the reac­tions tak­ing place but they are a major part of them.  If you’re not much aware of cat­a­lysts then you may not be aware of Catal­y­sis either. This post will give you all the infor­ma­tion you need about the process of Catal­y­sis.

What is Catalysis ?

Catal­y­sis is basi­cal­ly the reac­tion described above. They speed up the chem­i­cal reac­tion that is tak­ing place by suf­fi­cient­ly low­er­ing the ener­gy need­ed to allow the reac­tion to con­tin­ue. In oth­er words, it’s a process that car­ries out the orig­i­nal reac­tion at a faster pace while allow­ing you to save ener­gy. It’s no won­der that it’s termed as the basic process­es in all indus­tri­al chem­i­cal reac­tions. Amongst oth­er things, indus­tries most­ly use it to make plas­tics and sev­er­al man­u­fac­tured items as well. Note : Indus­tries are not the only places ded­i­cat­ed to using the process of Catal­y­sis, the human body is known to car­ry it out as well. 

Under­stand­ing the process

In an attempt to under­stand catal­y­sis, you have to know how exact­ly the mech­a­nism works. Every reac­tion has an acti­va­tion ener­gy which is the min­i­mum ener­gy required to break the bonds of the sub­stance. Adding a cat­a­lyst pro­vides a new path­way for reac­tion to pro­ceed and this path­way is, more often than not, the short­er route. This would mean that the rate of reac­tion is increased, ener­gy decreased and the process occur­ring much more effi­cient­ly than nor­mal. The process of catal­y­sis does, in no way, affect the end-prod­uct and nei­ther is it, itself, affect­ed by the reac­tion. You can expect pure prod­ucts at your dis­pos­al by the end of every reac­tion.

Types of catalysts

Most peo­ple believe that cat­a­lysts are man-made fea­tures used in indus­tries, how­ev­er, that is not always true. There are two major types of cat­a­lysts avail­able :

Nat­ur­al Cat­a­lysts ; aka Enzymes

Enzymes are the most com­mon cat­a­lysts and they are most­ly found in nature. These are the cat­a­lysts found inside the human body and through them, the body is able to achieve low rat­ed process to occur at a much faster rate. Enzymes are nor­mal­ly con­sid­ered as the most effi­cient cat­a­lysts and often work with a ​“lock and key” mech­a­nism for faster results.

Lab­o­ra­to­ry Catalysts

These cat­a­lysts are usu­al­ly found in lab­o­ra­to­ries and are known to be acidic or basic. Some reac­tions tend to occur faster in the pres­ence of acids and bases and that’s where these cat­a­lysts come in. While these tend to par­tic­i­pate dur­ing the reac­tion, the end prod­uct will not con­tain traces of these cat­a­lysts. Oth­er types con­tain fine met­al grains which use the process of adsorp­tion to car­ry out the process. Most indus­tries such as Wat­son Inter­na­tion­al, excelling at chem­i­cal pro­duc­tion make use of cat­a­lysts in their every­day process­es. This com­pa­ny excels at syn­the­siz­ing the first class prod­ucts for clients of any field.