Catalysis

Catalysis is the increase in the rate of a chemical reaction due to the participation of an additional substance called a catalyst. Catalysts are not consumed in the reaction and remain unchanged after it.

Quotes

• Catalysts are used in the production of a large variety of chemicals and fuels, as demonstrated by the fact that catalyst-based manufacturing accounts for about 60% of chemical products and 90% of processes (Senkan 2001). These numbers will likely increase in the future, considering all the advantages of a catalytic process: it requires only small amount of a ‘smart’ molecule to produce a large quantity of the desired compound; the catalyst usually allows operation under mild reaction conditions; also the economic benefits of an efficient catalytic process are enormous since it is less capital-intensive, has lower operating costs, produces products of higher purity and fewer by-products. In addition, catalysts provide important environmental benefits.
  • M. Benaglia, "Recoverable, Soluble Polymer-Supported Organic Catalysts" in Organocatalysis (2008) edited by M.T. Reetz, B. List, S. Jaroch, H. Wein, mann.

• If, as we yet can scarcely doubt, there are catalytic influences which are the cause of the miasmic spread of disease, it is possible that an antiseptic substance, such as salt, even in vanishingly small quantities, may indeed not be without definite influence upon such processes in the air. From daily and long continued spectrum observation it would be easy to learn whether the variation in the intensity of the spectral line Na_α, produced by the sodium combination in the air, is related in any degree to the appearance and the spread of endemic diseases.
  • Gustav Kirchhoff and Robert Bunsen, "Chemical Analysis by Spectral Observations", Annalen der Physik (1860) ed., Johann Christian Poggendorff, Vol. 110, 1860. pp. 275-301. As quoted in The Laws of Radiation and Absorption: Memoirs by Prévost, Stewart, Kirchhoff, and Kirchhoff and Bunsen (1901) Tr., ed., DeWitt Bristol Brace, pp. 108.

• Due to economic and ecological factors, catalytic processes in the production of fine chemicals are gaining in importance, especially in the area of asymmetric catalysis (Collins et al. 1997; Breuer et al. 2004). Accordingly, the practicing chemist has three major options: transition metal catalysts (Jacobsen et al. 1999), organocatalysts (Berkessel and Gröger 2004) or enzymes (Drauz and Waldmann 2002; Liese et al. 2006). All of them have advantages and disadvantages, which means that a given type of catalysis cannot be expected to provide general solutions to all problems of relevance in academic and industrial laboratories. Therefore, research in all three approaches needs to be intensified.
  • Manfred T. Reetz, "Controlling the Selectivity and Stability of Proteins by New Strategies in Directed Evolution: The Case of Organocatalytic Enzymes", in Organocatalysis (2008) edited by M.T. Reetz, B. List, S. Jaroch, H. Weinmann.