Explaining what catalysis is

The fol­low­ing is a new fea­ture post­ed at the top of the list of sub-fold­ers of the NACS web­site. Sug­ges­tions or ways to enhance the mes­sage are welcome.

What is Catal­y­sis.…. or Catal­y­sis, So what?

This short mes­sage is intend­ed to pro­vide ways to explain what catal­y­sis is. Count­less times, I’ve been asked about what is catal­y­sis from per­sons of dif­fer­ing back­grounds: immi­gra­tion offi­cials, four­somes on a golf course, exec­u­tives in air­planes, or neigh­bors. To those of us who work in the field, we see tremen­dous val­ue which has repeat­ed­ly been sup­port­ed by sur­veys of the impact of catal­y­sis upon finan­cial mea­sur­ing tools, like the GNP (Gross Nation­al Prod­uct), but we need to be able to explain our pro­fes­sion to those not famil­iar with the technology. 

Catal­y­sis is a tech­nol­o­gy which increas­es the rate of a chem­i­cal reac­tion. This tech­ni­cal field employs both sci­en­tists and engi­neers. Cat­a­lysts are the mate­ri­als used by these per­sons to explore the phe­nom­e­non of catal­y­sis. Cat­a­lysts are mate­ri­als which speed up chem­i­cal reac­tions with­out the cat­a­lyst being con­sumed; they are mate­ri­als which induce change. More specif­i­cal­ly, cat­a­lysts are mate­ri­als which change the rate of attain­ment of chem­i­cal equi­lib­ri­um with­out them­selves being changed or con­sumed in the process. Cat­a­lysts also pro­vide selec­tiv­i­ty or speci­fici­ty to par­tic­u­lar prod­ucts which are more desir­able than oth­ers. All these attrib­ut­es about catal­y­sis and cat­a­lysts trans­late to ener­gy sav­ings, less pol­lu­tion, few­er side prod­ucts, low­er cost reac­tor mate­ri­als, and ulti­mate­ly prod­ucts which reduce glob­al warm­ing. It has been said (A. Mit­tasch) that “chem­istry with­out catal­y­sis would be a sword with­out a handle…or a bell with­out sound.”

Catal­y­sis is the key to both life and lifestyle. It is an essen­tial tech­nol­o­gy for chem­i­cal and mate­ri­als man­u­fac­tur­ing, for fuel cells and oth­er ener­gy con­ver­sion sys­tems, for com­bus­tion devices, and for pol­lu­tion con­trol sys­tems which great­ly impact every­one on our plan­et. Some oth­er spe­cif­ic exam­ples of what cat­a­lysts do include appli­ca­tions for 

  • Fuels & Ener­gy — Over half the world’s gaso­line is cur­rent­ly pro­duced by a process devel­oped in 1942 called Flu­id Cat­alyt­ic Crack­ing (FCC). This process rev­o­lu­tion­ized the petro­le­um indus­try by more effi­cient­ly trans­form­ing high­er boil­ing oils into lighter, usable prod­ucts. FCC pro­duces gaso­line as well as heat­ing oil, fuel oil, propane, butane, and chem­i­cal feed­stocks that are instru­men­tal in pro­duc­ing oth­er prod­ucts such as plas­tics, syn­thet­ic rub­bers and fab­rics, and cos­met­ics. It is con­sid­ered one of the most impor­tant chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing achieve­ments of the 20th cen­tu­ry. In the future, cat­a­lysts will be used to pro­duce clean ener­gy from renew­able ener­gy sources, such as hydro­gen for fuel cells and trans­porta­tion fuels from non-edi­ble biomass. 
  • Emis­sions — Auto­mo­bile emis­sion cat­a­lysts have been devel­oped since the 1960s to destroy CO, NOx and hydro­car­bon emis­sions from mobile vehi­cles. Cat­a­lysts are also used to destroy the ori­gins of sul­fur based emis­sions in the com­bus­tion of fuels. In addi­tion cat­a­lysts are wide­ly used to destroy the objec­tion­able emis­sions from the world’s coal fired pow­er plants.
  • Poly­mers — Cat­a­lysts are also used in the pro­duc­tion of the world’s poly­mers. Cur­rent exam­ples of poly­mers include adhe­sives, coat­ings, foams, and pack­ag­ing mate­ri­als, tex­tile and indus­tri­al fibers, com­pos­ites, elec­tron­ic devices, bio­med­ical devices, 
  • opti­cal devices, and pre­cur­sors for many new­ly devel­oped high-tech ceramics. 

  • Life — Enzymes are one exam­ple of cat­a­lysts with­in our bod­ies which are crit­i­cal to main­tain­ing life. Fur­ther, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of ana­lyz­ing and ulti­mate­ly manip­u­lat­ing genes rests on the cat­alyt­ic prop­er­ties of RNA to repli­cate mol­e­cules con­tain­ing bio­log­i­cal information. 
  • Health — The phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try employ­ees large amounts of cat­a­lysts need­ed to pro­duce the speci­fici­ty of prod­ucts they require. Cat­a­lysts used in the pro­duc­tion of drugs are used to save lives and improve the health and lifestyle of peo­ple around the world. 
  • Food - Cat­a­lysts are wide­ly used in food pro­cess­ing and enhance the per­for­mance of oth­er con­sumer prod­ucts such as laun­dry detergents. 

The eco­nom­ic con­tri­bu­tion from catal­y­sis is as remark­able as the phe­nom­e­non itself. Four sec­tors of the world’s econ­o­my are petro­le­um, ener­gy pro­duc­tion, chem­i­cals pro­duc­tion, and the food indus­try; togeth­er they account for more than 10 tril­lion dol­lars of the world’s GNP, and all of these are crit­i­cal­ly depen­dent on the use of cat­a­lysts. Esti­mates are that catal­y­sis con­tributes to greater than 35% of glob­al GDP; the biggest part of this con­tri­bu­tion comes from the gen­er­a­tion of high ener­gy fuels (i.e., gaso­line, diesel, hydro­gen) which depend crit­i­cal­ly on the use of small amounts of cat­a­lysts in our world’s petro­le­um refiner­ies. As a busi­ness, the cat­a­lyst mar­ket itself is grow­ing from the cur­rent US$12 bil­lion, so that catal­y­sis costs are much less than 0.1% of the sales rev­enue from the prod­ucts which they create.

The North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety is a not-for-prof­it pro­fes­sion­al orga­ni­za­tion of over 1,500 sci­en­tists and engi­neers who work in the field of catal­y­sis. The web­site for the Soci­ety, www.nacatsoc.org pro­vides infor­ma­tion to mem­bers and to the pub­lic about pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ties as well as fold­ers con­tain­ing infor­ma­tion on catal­y­sis sci­ence. Those seek­ing addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion and oth­er detailed exam­ples on what catal­y­sis is, does, or the val­ue it pro­vides are encour­age to look fur­ther at the edu­ca­tion­al sub­fold­ers on this web­site. Anoth­er resource is the excel­lent text­book: Fun­da­men­tals of Indus­tri­al Cat­alyt­ic Process­es, by C. H. Bartholomew and Robert J. Far­rauto, pub­lished by John Wiley & Sons; 2nd edi­tion (2005), ISBN-13: 978–0471457138
 
John Armor
GlobalCatalysis.com, Feb­ru­ary 2008
(with sug­ges­tions from Bob Far­rauto and Enrique Igle­sia)