Rate Of Reaction And What Affects It.

In chemistry, the rate of the reaction is very important as it determines how fast the product is made. The rate is the amount of product made per unit time and in industry, it is of the highest priority of the scientists to increase the rate of reaction to as high as possible as it is more efficient.

Temperature:
Generally, if you increase the temperature of a reaction the rate of reaction increases. This is because the reactant particles have more kinetic energy and so move around a lot more. This increases the chances of collisions between reactant particles and therefore successful collisions that form the product. Two reactant particles can collide but unsuccessfully and the product will not be made. So successful collisions are important. However, if the forwards reaction is an exothermic reaction, and increase in temperature will actually decrease the yield of the product as the position of equilibrium will shift to counteract the change so will shift in the endothermic direction, favouring the reactants. So there is a fine balance that must be reached.

Concentration:
An increase in concentration will increase the rate of reaction as there are more reactant particles which means that there is a much higher chance of successful collisions. The chance of those reactant particles colliding into each other increases because the volume of the container stays the same.

Catalyst:

A catalyst could be a chemical compound or an enzyme. They do not get used up in the reaction and only increase the rate of the reaction. They lower the activation energy of the reactant particles which means that more particles can collide successfully with other reactant particles. Activation energy is the minimum energy required for a reactant particle to have so that it can collide successfully with other reactant particles. So if this energy is lowered, then a higher proportion of these reactant particles will be able to collide.