“Catalysts can change the kinetics (rate) of a reaction, but they can’t change the thermodynamics.”
Thanks for reminding me, it’s been awhile since I’ve taken those courses back in college. Energy input will be higher than energy output as long as mass is conserved, but 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, thus some of the mass being converted into energy like what happens in a fusion reaction, something that probably isn’t possible according to current science. Oh well.
>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.