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Monitoring and Controlling Chemical Reactions

Catalysts and how they work

  • 3 things to know
  • Paper 10 (Chemistry)

Overview

What a catalyst is, why its mass is unchanged and it sits above the arrow, why catalysts are specific and used in industry, and the catalysts for hydrogen peroxide, ammonia and sulfuric acid.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Key term

Explain why only a small mass of catalyst is needed to convert a very large mass of reactant.

Key term

Describe how you could show experimentally that a substance added to a reaction acted as a catalyst.

Key term

Name a metal used as the catalyst in a car's catalytic converter.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    What is a catalyst?

    Model answer

    It is a substance that increases the rate of a reaction without being used up or chemically changed by the end of it.

  2. 2

    Is a catalyst used up during a reaction, and what does this mean for its mass at the end?

    Model answer

    No, it is not used up, so the same mass of catalyst can be recovered at the end and used again.

  3. 3

    Does a catalyst appear as a reactant in the balanced equation for a reaction?

    Model answer

    No, because it is not consumed; it is usually written above the arrow instead.

  4. 4

    Are catalysts general or specific in their action?

    Model answer

    They are specific, so a catalyst that works for one reaction will usually have no effect on a different one.

  5. 5

    Does adding a catalyst change the amount of product a reaction eventually makes?

    Model answer

    No, it changes only how quickly the product is made; the final amount is the same.

  6. 6

    Give two reasons why catalysts are used so widely in industry.

    Model answer

    They allow a useful rate at a lower temperature or pressure, which saves energy and money, and they increase the amount of product made per day from the same plant.

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