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Topic: What is considered as low activation energy?  (Read 1005 times)

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Offline Ruch

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What is considered as low activation energy?
« on: November 04, 2020, 06:57:18 PM »
For an experiment, I got 11.5 kJ as my activation energy. Is this low activation energy or high activation energy?

Offline mjc123

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Re: What is considered as low activation energy?
« Reply #1 on: November 06, 2020, 12:53:03 PM »
I don't know that there's any agreed definition of "low" or "high" activation energies. Different reactions have a wide range of activation energies. But here's a suggestion. There is a rule of thumb that says that for many "typical" reactions the rate roughly doubles for each 10 K increase in temperature. Now, can you work out the activation energy if the rate constant increases by a factor of 2 when T increases from 300 to 310 K? If your experimental 11.5 kJ/mol [note units!] is much higher than this, I would call it "high". If it is much lower, I would call it "low".

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