![]() The report was considered so important that it was recommended be published in the Journal des Savants Etrangers ( Passagez, 1935). ![]() ![]() This work may be considered the first systematic study of catalytic reactions by metals it was mentioned in a report read by Antoine Francois de Fourcroy (1755-1809) on Decem( Fourcroy, 1797ab). In the late eighteenth century Johann Rudolph Deiman (1743-1808), Adrien Paets von Trootswijk (1752-1837), Anthoni Lauwerenburg (1758-1820), Nicolas Bondt (1765-1796), and Pieter Nieuwland (1764-1794), reported that gaz hydrogène carboné huileux (ethylene) could be prepared by treating 25 parts of alcohol with 75 parts of concentrated sulfuric acid, without external heating, and also by passing alcohol or ether vapors through a glass tube containing silica or alumina, or simply through an empty tube of clay. In 1878 Willy Kühne (1837-1900) suggested the name enzyme for biological catalysts. Payen established the theory of beer fabrication, discovered the process actually used for obtaining dextrin, determined its composition, and showed it to be an isomer of starch. Payen and Persoz found that the activity of diastase is eliminated by heating to 100☌. In 1833 Anselme Payen (1795-1871) and Jean-François Persoz (1805-1868) ( Payen and Persoz, 1833) found that the transformation of starch discovered by Kirchhoff was attributable to the action of a special substance, which they called diastase (amylase). Treating the resulting solution with alkali recovered all the acid employed ( Kirchhoff, 1811). In 1811 Sigismund Konstantin Kirchhoff (1764-1833) discovered that heating an aqueous solution of starch with mineral acids changed it into a gum, dextrin and raisin sugar, without the acids being modified by the reaction and without release of gas. He also discovered the catalytic action of manganese dioxide on the thermal decomposition of potassium chlorate, the basis for the preparation of oxygen ( Kauffman, 1999). This reaction was more thoroughly studied by Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner (1780-1849) who found that starch dissolved in water is fermented into alcohol he assumed that the starch was first converted into sugar ( Döbereiner, 1816). In 1781 Antoine Augustin Parmentier (1737-1813) observed that potato starch mixed with distilled water and cream of tartar (potassium hydrogen tartrate), acquires a sweet taste after several months, which is more pronounced if acetic acid has been added ( Parmentier, 1781). ![]() The first known use of inorganic catalysts is from 1552 when Valerius Cordus (1514-1554) used sulfuric acid to catalyze the conversion of alcohol to ether ( Cordus, 1575). The art of producing alcohol from sugar by fermentation is known from the beginning of human history. By the 1830s the pieces of the puzzle were falling in place, the phenomenon was given its present name, and physical adsorption proposed as its possible mechanism. By the beginning of the 19th century the catalytic properties of many metals, notably platinum, had been noticed and extensively investigated, and a crude description of homogeneous catalysis using an unstable intermediate was suggested. Here we trace the development of the concept and its explanation, from the dawn of its history until the first Nobel Prizes were awarded in 19 for significant contribution in the field. Nevertheless, for certain reactions like decomposition catalysis was due to the activity of solids previously heated and could be attributed to heat. By means of this action, they produce decomposition in bodies, and form new compounds into the composition of which they do not enter” ( Berzelius, 1835).Īccording to Kilani and Batis ( Kilani, Batis and Chastrette, 2001), by the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries the accumulation of experimental data relative to the modification of diverse chemical reactions by the presence of small amounts of foreign substances was enough to see the beginning of explanation of the phenomena in a frame outside the theory of chemical affinity. Berzelius wrote that by the term catalysis he meant “the property of exerting on other bodies an action which is very different from chemical affinity. The term catalysis, proposed in 1835 by Jöns Jakob Berzelius (1779-1848), comes from the Greek words kata meaning down and lyein meaning loosen. Catalysis is a phenomenon known from very ancient times, although not so its theory or characteristics nowadays it plays a fundamental role in the manufacture of the vast majority of chemicals used by our society.
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