What kind of catalysts are there

Platinum and alumina are highly effective bifunctional catalysts. While the platinum dehydrogenates alkanes, the resulting alkene molecules are then absorbed by the alumina. Processes like this one allow for the dehydrogenation of butane into butene, an important chemical intermediary, for example. Nickel is prized for its use as a catalyst thanks to its relatively low cost. It also has a higher catalytic performance than many other noble metals.

The better the chemical components, the more productive a catalytic reaction is likely to be. Noah Technologies specializes in helping manufacturers determine best-use chemicals for a variety of applications ; we offer in-house catalytic processing as well as chemicals for off-site processing. Questions about how to improve your reaction outputs? Our in-house chemists can help. Contact us today to tell us more about what you need from a chemical supplier.

Contact Us Today! Factories rely on catalysts to make everything from plastic to drugs. Catalysts help process petroleum and coal into liquid fuels. Natural catalysts in the body — known as enzymes — even play important roles in digestion and more. During any chemical reaction, molecules break chemical bonds between their atoms. The atoms also make new bonds with different atoms. This is like swapping partners at a square dance.

Sometimes, those partnerships are easy to break. A molecule may have certain properties that let it lure away atoms from another molecule. But in stable partnerships, the molecules are content as they are. Left together for a very long period of time, a few might eventually switch partners. Catalysts make such a breaking and rebuilding happen more efficiently. They do this by lowering the activation energy for the chemical reaction.

Activation energy is the amount of energy needed to allow the chemical reaction to occur. The catalyst just changes the path to the new chemical partnership. It builds the equivalent of a paved highway to bypass a bumpy dirt road. Like a wingman, it encourages other molecules to react. Some notable chemical processes that occur through homogeneous catalysis are carbonylation, oxidation, hydrocyanation, metathesis, and hydrogenation.

Some of the exemplary processes that use heterogeneous catalysts are Haber-Bosch process for the synthesis of ammonia, Fischer—Tropsch process to produce a variety of hydrocarbons. Heterogeneous catalysts dominate major industrial processes because of the easy separation of product and recovery of catalyst.

Heterogeneous catalysts may be used as fine particles, powders, granules. These catalysts may be deposited on the solid support supported catalysts , or used in bulk form unsupported catalysts. Supported catalyst play a pivotal role in the industrial revolution. As heterogeneous catalysis is a surface phenomenon, the performance of catalysts depends on the exposed surface area. Exposed surface area increases with decreasing particle size but the smaller particles tend to aggregate and result in the deactivation of the catalyst.

Tethering of catalytic active site on solid support prevent the agglomeration of catalytic particles, hence improve the catalytic performance. For industrial application, solid supports considered to have high chemical, mechanical and thermal stability.

In addition, it must be inert and high surface to volume ratio. Generally used organic solid supports can be polymers e. Unsupported catalysts occupy the large section of industrial catalysis.

This includes metals, metals alloys, metal oxides, metal sulphides, zeolites etc.