Catalytic Turnover: Atom Economy Race

Two identical reactions run side by side, differing only in how the promoting reagent is supplied. In the top lane, a fixed handful of catalyst molecules sit at the reaction zone, converting a steady stream of substrate into product and cycling back to their original state every time — never consumed, turning over indefinitely, with the running total tracked as the turnover number (TON). In the bottom lane, an equivalent-for-equivalent stoichiometric activator is spent once per product molecule and reports straight to the waste bin alongside the reaction's intrinsic leaving group. Live readouts compute atom economy from the balanced equation and E-factor (waste mass per product mass) for each route from real molar-mass arithmetic, letting you see exactly why catalytic processes generate far less waste than stoichiometric ones even when the core chemistry — and its atom economy — is identical.