In the preceding post, I looked at a computed mechanism for the hydrolysis of a ketal by water. Of course, pure water consists of three potential catalysts, water itself or [H2O], and the products of autoionisation, [OH–] and [H3O+]. The latter are in much smaller concentration, equivalent to a penalty of ~11.9 kcal/mol on any free energy barrier. Here I take a look at these ion-catalysed routes to see if that penalty can be overcome.