{"id":210509,"date":"2025-04-04T01:03:19","date_gmt":"2025-04-04T06:03:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/common-catalyst-works-by-cycling-between-two-different-forms-upending-a-long-held-supposition"},"modified":"2025-04-04T01:03:19","modified_gmt":"2025-04-04T06:03:19","slug":"common-catalyst-works-by-cycling-between-two-different-forms-upending-a-long-held-supposition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/common-catalyst-works-by-cycling-between-two-different-forms-upending-a-long-held-supposition","title":{"rendered":"Common catalyst works by cycling between two different forms, upending a long-held supposition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/common-catalyst-works-by-cycling-between-two-different-forms-upending-a-long-held-supposition2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The process of catalysis\u2014in which a material speeds up a chemical reaction\u2014is crucial to the production of many of the chemicals used in our everyday lives. But even though these catalytic processes are widespread, researchers often lack a clear understanding of exactly how they work.<\/p>\n<p>A new analysis by researchers at MIT has shown that an important industrial synthesis process, the production of vinyl acetate, requires a catalyst to take two different forms, which cycle back and forth from one to the other as the chemical process unfolds.<\/p>\n<p>Previously, it had been thought that only one of the two forms was needed. The new findings are <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/science.ads7913\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> today in the journal <i>Science<\/i>, in a paper by MIT graduate students Deiaa Harraz and Kunal Lodaya, Bryan Tang, Ph.D., and MIT professor of chemistry and chemical engineering Yogesh Surendranath.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The process of catalysis\u2014in which a material speeds up a chemical reaction\u2014is crucial to the production of many of the chemicals used in our everyday lives. But even though these catalytic processes are widespread, researchers often lack a clear understanding of exactly how they work. A new analysis by researchers at MIT has shown that [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":732,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-210509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-engineering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/732"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210509\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}