NolaNZor

=Sulfuric Acid= toc

History
Sulfuric acid was a big turning point in industrial chemistry because using it as a catalyst allowed a lot more substances to be discovered and produced on a industrial scale We have known that sulfuric acid existed as early as the Eight century and used as early as the tenth century. The problem was it was impossible to produce enough of it to be useful on a industrial scale. There where no major advancements in the production of sulfuric acid until the early 1700's. Until finally the chamber process was introduced which was in 1746. The chamber process later known as the tower process was a largely complex idea of using nitrogen compounds to enhance the gas phase oxidation reaction of sulfur dioxide with oxygen. This produced nitrosylsulfuric acid - SO5NH-, In the chamber/tower process nitro sulfuric acid is mixed with water to form sulfuric acid and nitrogen oxide , The nitrogen oxide mixes with air to for nitrogen dioxide when keeps on getting recycled and using in the sulfur dioxide step.There where many reasons that made this a expensive and inefficient process,The reason it was also originally called the chamber process is because giant lead chambers some as large as 500,000. These were later replaced with towers and the process was further improved on but no where near as efficient as the catalytic contact process. Nearly all of the sulfuric acid produced today is done by the Contact process. This process was first envisioned in 1831 but there was no real funding or incentive for its development until half a century later.Even though in the 1880's plants where in development it didn't reach a economic scale of production until 1900's. The amount the plants produced rapidly increased in time as the process was perfected. With the earliest plants only producing 20 T a day later plants went to 100T, then to 5000T. People significant to the development of this process are, Edmund Davy (1817) for first noticing the catalytic reaction and also Peregrine Phillips (1831) for proposing the idea of the contact process which was later implemented on a industrial scale.

USE
More sulfuric acid is produced each year than any other manufactured chemical,This is because Sulfuric acid is one of the most useful chemicals in industry

One of the major uses of sulfuric acid in the production of fertilizers,But it is also greatly used in the manufacturing of other chemicals such as making Hydrochloric acid ,Nitric acid ,Dyes and explosives. It is also involved in many metal processing processes such as the cleaning of iron and steel.

But it is just not a industrial chemical it is also found in some applications in your home more specifically motor vehicles. Not 100 percent directly it is used to make Rayon which is used as a electrolyte in lead, acid battery like a car battery.

Equations / Contact Process
The first step in the contact process is to get sulfur dioxide

The most easy to understand way of getting sulfur dioxide is by burning sulfur in air. To make this process more efficient we can use chambers and use a high ratio of sulfur to oxygen


 * S (solid) + O2 (gas) > SO2(gas)**

Now for the complex conversion to Sulfur trioxide This reaction is a equilibrium as indicated by <->

Because the formation of Sulfur trioxide is a exothermic reaction safety conditions must be met as this is dangerous

Because we want to shift this reaction the the right Le Chatelier Principle states that we should decrease the heat, ironically this is not the case because the reaction would occur to slow so it is done at 400 - 450°C


 * 2 x SO2 (liquid) + O2 (gas) <-> 2x SO3 ( gas )**

There is more irony ahead as the Sulfur trioxide is then dissolved in concentrated Sulfuric acid and then is reacted with water, There is method to madness as reacting the sulfur trioxide with water before it has been reacted with the concentrated sulfuric acid would produce undesirable results


 * H2SO4 ( liquid ) + SO3 (gas ) ---> H2S2O7 (liquid)**


 * H2S2O7 + H2O -->2x H2SO4 ( liquid )**

Diagrams and other Fun stuff

 * Here is a video explanation of the process**

media type="youtube" key="Bu3ns9Ii80M" width="769" height="405"


 * This is a diagram using the pyrite process of getting sulfur dioxide**



The Industrial scale process we see here is quite different from the one described as this uses filters ect

The dust filter is actually used for filtering out the arsenic compounds and the other towers are mainly for removing impurities but the basis of the process is the same

SCALE
We can conclude from all of this that it is not viable to do the contact process on a small scale. All the equipment required for the process is extremely expensive and requires maintenance which is obviously a problem to do this on a small Scale but there are a lot of safety concerns as the reaction is exothermic and in the pyrite process arsenic compounds are produced.

Also as the history section showed enough of sulfuric acid is produced by the large scale operations we saw even in the 1930's 5000T was not a far fetched production.With the machines of today production is only limited by time and space the reality of this is that if this is done on a small scale with cheap equipment and labor, It would prove to be counter productive. The use of highly concentrated sulfuric acid is also not a pleasing disaster to see, As highly concentrated sulfuric acid can cause some serious damage to the skin and if in gaseous form will wreak havoc on your sarcophagus and stomach

Interactive media
http://www.wix.com/loytaloyta/sulfuric-acid#!