>I was attempting to imagine some sort of catalytic reaction which would initiate the loss of some mass during separation that could be used to drive the reaction forward beyond what the energy inputted would do
You know what we call a loss of mass reaction?
That’s called a nuclear reaction.
The energy produced is described by the well-known equation:
E = mc^2
Some guy named Einstein came up with that.
c is the speed of light, which is a pretty big number, so when you square it, you get a REALLY big number, such that it doesn’t take much mass destroyed to output a boatload of energy. Look up Tsar Bomba for an extreme example.
Yeah I was smoking too much weed today and was pondering a bunch of nonsensical stuff unfortunately. Still I remember as a kid doing the electrolysis of water I was surprised how little energy it seemed to take compared to the volume of the gases produced. Since splitting H2O involves not only a chemical change but also phase change, there would be a transfer of heat energy between the molecules and the surrounding environment, in this case going from the environment into being absorbed by the molecules and exciting them into a gaseous state. So it’s not a closed system, outside energy (heat from the environment) would be introduced into it. Whether enough is gained to make a difference is probably questionable though.