Name: Emulsions: Oil in Water
Uploaded: 2019-07-19
Duration: 2 min 19 s
Description: An emulsion is a temporarily stable mixture of immiscible fluids, such as oil and water. Watch this interesting video to learn more about emulsions.

Question

What is the difference between homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis?

Accepted Answer

Homogeneous catalysis: In a homogeneous catalysed reaction, the reactants, products, and catalysts are present in the same phase. For example: in the following reaction the catalyst $NO$ , reactants, ${SO}_{2} and O_{2}$ , and product, ${SO}_{3}$ are present in the gaseous form.

$2 {SO}_{2} (g) + O_{2} (g) \overset{NO (g)}{\to} 2 {SO}_{3} (g)$

Heterogeneous catalysis: In a reaction, the catalyst is present in a different phase i.e. it is not present in the same phase as that of reactants or products. This is generally referred to as contact catalysis and the catalyst present is in the form of finely divided metal or as gauze. For example: In Haber’s process for the manufacture of ammonia, iron is used as a catalyst for the reaction between Hydrogen and Nitrogen.

$N_{2} (g) + 3 H_{2} (g) \overset{Fe (s)}{\to} 2 {NH}_{3} (g)$

What is the difference between homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis?

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