[firewall]

In organopalladium catalysis (or any type of organic catalysis for that matter), is it possible to use too much catalyst? By "too much," I mean, would it be possible to compromise the reaction by adding more catalyst than is required (perhaps a chemist decides to add more than he or she needs "just to be safe"). My understanding of catalysis would lead me to believe that reasonable amounts of unnecessary catalyst will not jeapordize the procedure. Is that accurate?

[Dan]

I expect that it wouldn't cause problems in the sense that the end product will be the same.

However, unless you are recovering the catalyst there are financial rammifications.

From a safety/environmental point of view, you don't want to use more of a toxic catalyst than you need.

Too much catalyst may also result in a undesirably violent reaction. I think someone mentioned this ages ago in one of the forums, that they used rather more of a Pd catalyst than was used in a literary procedure and it went runaway.