2D Catalyst & Reaction Rate

Reaction Chambers

Temperature 300 K

Catalyst loading 60%

Energy profile

no catalyst with catalyst

Readouts

Product (plain)

Product (catalyst)

Rate (plain) /s

0.0

Rate (catalyst) /s

0.0

Eₐ plain

Eₐ catalyst

How it works

Two identical chambers hold the same mix of reactant A (blue) and reactant B (red) molecules bouncing at a speed set by the temperature slider. In the left chamber they must clear the full activation-energy barrier Eₐ to react into product C (green). The right chamber is seeded with catalyst sites (gold) that open a lower-energy pathway — the more of the chamber's surface is loaded with catalyst, the closer the effective barrier drops toward its minimum, without changing the reactants or the product.

collision energy: E = k · v_rel²
reacts when E > Eₐ, with probability
  p = 1 − exp(−(E − Eₐ) / Eₐ)
Eₐ(catalyst) = Eₐ(plain) − loading · (Eₐ(plain) − Eₐ,min)

Temperature — raises molecular speed, so more collisions clear the barrier each second (this is the Boltzmann/Arrhenius effect, shown here as speed rather than a literal exponential for visual clarity).
Catalyst loading — the fraction of the right-hand chamber's volume covered by active catalyst sites; 0% behaves exactly like the plain chamber, 100% reaches the lowest possible barrier.
Energy profile — the two curves show the same start (reactants) and end (products) energy, differing only in how high the transition-state peak sits — a catalyst never changes the reaction's thermodynamics, only the path.
The catalyst itself is never consumed: its gold markers stay fixed in the chamber for the whole run.

Reactant A Reactant B Product C Catalyst site