ACTIVATION ENERGY

Group Members:
Basit Israr Khan (D-16-CH-07)
Rizwan Yaseen (D-16-CH-51)
Raja Muhammad Mashab (D-16-CH-37)
Noor Jan Kakar (D-16-CH-55)
 What is Activation Energy?
• Activation energy (Ea):
“The minimum amount of energy (in KJ/mole) that must be
absorbed by a system to cause it to react“.
• Important factors:
• • Temperature-an increase helps the reaction reach the
transition state
• • Orientation-the reactants have to collide in a certain
orientation to react
Reaction Progress and Activation Energy
Negative activation energy
• In some cases, rates of reaction decrease with increasing
temperature.
• Increasing the temperature leads to a reduced probability
of the colliding molecules capturing one another (with
more glancing collisions not leading to reaction as the
higher momentum carries the colliding particles out of the
potential well), expressed as a reaction cross section that
decreases with increasing temperature.
How to decrease the Activation Energy
• There are two ways to increase the rate constant for a
given reaction:
a) Raise the temperature
b) Use a catalyst to lower the activation energy Ea

• Catalysts change the reaction mechanism in such a way

as to decrease the activation energy Ea
• it does not change the energies of the original reactants
or products. Rather, the reactant energy and the product
energy remain the same and only the activation energy is
altered (lowered).
Catalysts Lower (Ea):
• Instead of increasing the temperature, use a catalyst to
lower the energy barrier to reaction. Catalysts change the
reaction mechanism.
(Ea) vs Catalysts
Determining Activation Energy
• The Arrhenius Equation

k is the rate constant

Ea is the activation energy (to be discussed)
“A” is the pre-exponential factor representing the likelihood
that collisions with the proper orientation occur.
R is the gas constant (8.314 J/mol K)
T is the temperature in Kelvin
• Another useful form of the equation relates the rate
constant k at two temperatures

Where k1 is the rate constant at T1 , and k2 is the rate

constant at T2