How Does Surface Saturation Affect Catalytic Efficiency?
When a catalyst surface is saturated, further addition of reactants will not increase the reaction rate. This phenomenon is described by the Langmuir-Hinshelwood mechanism, which postulates that the reaction rate depends on the coverage of reactant molecules on the catalyst surface. At high coverage, the reaction rate reaches a maximum, beyond which any additional reactant molecules will not find available active sites and thus will not contribute to the reaction rate.
