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Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Le Châtelier's Principle

As chemists, we always want to use our knowledge to produce valuable products as much possible as we can. A French chemist, Le Châtelier find a super useful principle:
If a system at equilibrium and disturbed by a change of concentration of chemicals, temperature and pressure, the system will shift its equilibrium to a certain direction.

More specifically, if we add reactants into system, which means the concentration of reactants enhanced, the reaction will shift from reactants toward the products. Vice versa.
If we contract the pressure of system, the reaction will shift to fewer gas direction. Vice versa.
If we increasing the temperature, the reaction will shift toward right if it is a endothermic reaction and will shift toward left if it is a exothermic reaction.
      Image from The Central Science 13th edition

So, our chemists can according to our need, change the temperature, pressure and concentration to product more target chemicals.

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