Effect of catalysts
The rate of a reaction can be increased by adding a suitable catalyst. A catalyst is a substance which increases the rate of a chemical reaction but it is not used up (remains chemically unchanged at the end).
Only a very small amount of catalyst is needed to increase the rate of reaction between large amounts of reactants.
A catalyst is specific to a particular reaction:
- different catalysts catalyse different reactions
- not all reactions have suitable catalysts