Katal

The katal (symbol: kat) is the SI unit of catalytic activity. It is a derived SI unit for expressing quantity values of catalytic activity of enzymes and other catalysts. Its use is recommended by the General Conference on Weights and Measures and other international organizations. It replaces the non-SI enzyme unit. Enzyme units are, however, still more commonly used than the katal in practice at present, especially in biochemistry.

The katal is not used to express the rate of a reaction; that is expressed in moles per second. Rather, it is used to express catalytic activity which is a property of the catalyst. The katal is invariant of the measurement procedure, but the numerical quantity value is not and depends on the experimental conditions. Therefore, in order to define the quantity of a catalyst, the rate of conversion of a defined chemical reaction has to be specified, preferably of the first order, under strictly controlled conditions. One katal of trypsin, for example, is that amount of trypsin which breaks a mole of peptide bonds per second under specified conditions.

Definition

<math> kat = mol/s </math>

Origin

The name katal has been used for decades and it became an official SI unit in 1999.

External links

• Unit "katal" for catalytic activity (IUPAC Technical Report) Pure Appl. Chem. Vol. 73, No. 6, pp. 927-931 (2001) [1]

• The Tortuous Road to the Adoption of katal for the Expression of Catalytic Activity by the General Conference on Weights and Measures (Clinical Chemistry. (2002) Vol. 48, pp. 586-590. [2]