A general term for a chemical which accelerates a reaction without becoming chemically involved is called a catalyst.
Catalysts are used in industrial processes to speed up the rate of a chemical reaction. For instance, in the Contact process used in the production of sulphuric (vi) acid, vanadium(V) oxide (V2O5) is used as a catalyst to speed up the production of the acid. Vanadium(V) oxide (V2O5) is preferred to Platinum which was initially used as the catalyst since it does not react with any of the products of the process
