A catalyst is a really useful thing to have, as its purpose is to make a reaction go quicker by reducing the amount of energy ne […]
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A catalyst is a really useful thing to have, as its purpose is to make a reaction go quicker by reducing the amount of energy needed to start it; in effect, this was the “go-faster stripes” we were looking for.
TAED reacts with perborates and percarbonates which are formulated into the laundry booster, to produce hydrogen peroxide in the wash; all we are doing is cutting out all of the chemical “middle men” and giving the TAED some hydrogen peroxide to work on directly.
The small amount of Oxy laundry booster on it's own isn't strong enough to generate enough peroxides in solution to do the job, so we are deliberately giving it some help by adding some hydrogen peroxide directly into the mixture. It is this, along with the UV light, that allows us to destabilise the Bromine / Oxygen bond, break it and and attach a Hydrogen atom to the Bromine, removing the yellowing. Cool, eh?
The best explanation that I have for what we are doing is this. We are breaking apart hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) into O, H and water (H2O). Water dissociates into H and OH naturally. We are taking the oxygen away from the bromine using TAED and UV light, then replacing it with a hydrogen. The removed O links up with the O from the broken up peroxide and becomes O2 and is given off as bubbles. The picture below from Tonyyeb shows this crazy but useful mechanism at work; the bubbles are caused by the reaction on the surface of the ABS plastic.