Chem1 General Chemistry Virtual Textbook → Dynamics → - - - - -

More on Catalysis

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- What you should be able to do
- Concept map

Draft version only - Not for release!

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1 Some important catalytic processes

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2 Fuel-related processes

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3 Catalysis timeline

1794 | Elizabeth Fulhame (?-?), Scottish chemist, publishes her book An Essay on Combustions where she describes her experiments showing that water participates in many inorganic oxidation reactions, and that it is regenerated with the products. It thus appears that she demonstrated the first instance of a catalyst, and some years in advence of Berzelius, who initially believed that catalysis involved organic substances only. Sir Humphrey Davy (1778-1829) discovered that a heated platinum wire could initiate explosion of combustible gases. It appears, however that he did not recognize the function of platinum as a non-reactant and thus as a catalyst.
1797 | The first recorded use of clay minerals as heterogeneous catalysts by Bondt et. al. who studied the dehydration of alcohols.
1822 | German chemist Johann Döbereiner (1780-1849) showed that a platinum wire could catalyze the combustion of hydrogen and oxygen even at room temperature. (One year later, he applied this process to the invention of a cigar lighter. He is better known for his organizing of the elements according to their properties (his Law of Triads) that predated the periodic table.
1835 | Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius (1779-1848) analyzes earlier work on the role of sulfuric acid in promoting the conversion of ethanol to ether, shows that the hydrolysis of starch is catalyzed more efficiently by malt diastase than by sulphuric acid, and publishes the first general theory of chemical catalysis, introducing the terms "catalysis" (katalyska kraft), "catalyst" which he defined as "substances which by their mere presence evoke chemical reactions that would not otherwise take place." (He also coined the words "polymer", "isomer" and "allotrope", and named several chemical elements.)
1877 | German physiologist Wilhelm Kühne (1837-1900) introduces the word "enzyme" in connection with his discovery of trypsin.
1907 | German chemist Eduard Buchner (1860-1917) receives Nobel Prize in Chemistry for showing that juice squeezed out of yeast cells can ferment sugars — thus finally overturning the old vitalistic idea that biological reactions can only take place within living cells.
1923 | Almer McAffee develops the first commercially viable catalytic cracking process, doubling or tripling the yield of gasoline from crude oil.1937
1937 | Eugene Houdree develops a catalytic cracking process that is able to change low-grade fuel oils into high-test gasoline
1960 | Planck and Rosinski develop the first zeoline catalyst for catalytic cracking

more cat history at http://www.nacatsoc.org/history.asp.

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What you should be able to do

Make sure you thoroughly understand the following essential ideas which have been presented above. It is especially imortant that you know the precise meanings of all the green-highlighted terms in the context of this topic.

- Describe the contrasting roles of thermodynamics and kinetics in understanding chemical change.
- Given a balanced net equation, write an expression for the rate of a reaction.
- Sketch a curve showing how the instantaneous rate of a reaction might change with time.
- Determine the order of a reaction of the form A → B + C from experimental data for the concentrations of its products at successive times.
- Describe the initial rate and isolation methods of determining the orders of the individual reactants in a reaction involving multiple reactants.
- Explain the difference between differential and integral rate laws.
- Sketch out a plot showing how the concentration of a component ([A] or ln [A]) that follows first-order kinetics will change with time. Indicate how the magnitude of the rate constant affects this plot
- Define the half-life of a reaction.
- Given the half-life for a first-order reaction A → products along with the initial value of [A]o, find [A]t at a subsequent time an integral number of half-lifes later.
- Describe the conditions under which a reaction can appear to have an order of zero.

Concept Map