Question

What is the effect of adding catalyst on activation energy and Gibbs energy of a reaction

Answer 1

However, if a catalyst is added to the reaction, the activation energy is lowered because a lower-energy transition state is formed, as shown in Figure 3. Enzymes can be thought of as biological catalysts that lower activation energy. Enzymes are proteins or RNA molecules that provide alternate reaction pathways with lower activation energies than the original pathways. Enzymes affect the rate of the reaction in both the forward and reverse directions; the reaction proceeds faster because less energy is required for molecules to react when they collide. Thus, the rate constant (k) increases.