Characterization of the catalysts by means of an oscillatory reaction

Abstract

One of the most known physical chemists Wilhelm Ostwald defined catalyst as a substance that participates in a particular chemical reaction and thereby increases its rate but without a net change in the amount of that substance in the system [1-3]. Hereinafter catalyst will referred as the common name for both, catalyst and inhibitor, where inhibitor has an opposite role decreasing the rate of chemical reaction. Having such important function in chemical kinetics and different applications, catalysts are the permanent subjects of scientific investigations. These investigations contain discovering of new catalysts, determining their physicochemical characteristics, and examinations of their influence on particular reactions. By the interaction between catalyst and reaction system, the control of considered process, as well as the characteristics of catalyst, can be analyzed in parallel. If our aim is the investigation of catalyst characteristics, the selection of reaction system as a matrix for its examination is of great importance. Therefore, we discussed in the following the different reaction systems including their main characteristics important for mentioned investigations (Sections I.A and I.B) with particular attention on oscillatory reactions in general (Section II) and Bray-Liebhafsky [4,5] in particular (Section III). In Section IV, the characterization of the catalysts by means of the Bray-Liebhafsky oscillatory reaction as the matrix system will be presented.