102 LIFE: ITS NATURE AND ORIGIN 



regenerator where the carbon is burned off. The revivified catalyst 

 is returned to the standpipe for reuse at the rate of about 40 tons a 

 minute. About 73,000 tons of catalyst are consumed annually in this 

 process, which has been yielding daily (after certain additions) over 

 400,000 barrels of 100-octane gasoline. Incidentally, there are also 

 produced certain raw materials for synthetic rubber. 



Germany developed the chemistry of coal and coal tar — because 

 she had coal. American chemists realize that besides coal we have 

 in our enormous supplies of natural gas and petroleum important 

 raw materials for a great and novel organic chemical industry, in 

 which catalysts are finding ever-increasing use. 



Although our knowledge of specific catalysts and catalytic proc- 

 esses has been greatly extended by actual experiment, Professor 

 P. H. Emmett states 8 that the selection of catalysts is still an art; 

 the time has not yet come when it is possible to predict in advance 

 with any degree of certainty the exact type of catalyst that will be 

 most effective for a hitherto untried reaction. 9 



To illustrate the view of Berzelius that catalysis is "a new mani- 

 festation of the electrochemical affinities of matter," consider the 

 electronic contour maps of phthalocyanine and of nickel phthalocya- 

 nine (Figures 13 and 14), as developed by Professor J. Monteath 

 Robertson from x-ray spectrographic studies at the Royal Institution 

 of London. Note how the introduction of a single nickel atom at 

 the center changes the electronic contour or "physiognomy" at that 

 point. The four benzene rings in the corners, as shown by the hexa- 

 gons in Figure 15, are too far from the center to be greatly affected. 

 The central core of phthalocyanine, represented by four pentagons 

 in Figure 15, consists of four pyrrol groups, arranged similarly to 

 those in porphyrin, a constituent of chlorophyll, cytochrome and 

 other biocatalysts or enzymes. While the specific activity of chloro- 

 phyll depends upon its central atom of magnesium, hemoglobin and 

 cytochrome have each an essential iron atom. A. H. Cook 10 found 

 that of all the metallic derivatives of phthalocyanine tried, only the 

 iron compound showed marked catalase activity; that is, it can catalyze 

 the decomposition of hydrogen peroxide. 



How Catalysts Function 



Catalysts function by virtue of their outwardly directed specific 

 fields of force, which produce characteristic distortions or warp- 

 ings in the fields of susceptible particles (atoms, molecules, ions or 

 larger particles) with which they come into contact for a suffi- 

 ciently long time to permit a synthesis or a breakdown. The dis- 



