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Offline NickNick

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Making sulfuric acid
« on: October 13, 2007, 09:22:58 PM »
A. I would like to know if anyone here has information about making sulfuric acid from copper sulfate or sulfide?

This may seem strange, but the chemical experiment I am conducting requires the acid be made from native copper sulfate because sulfuric acid made from yellow sulfur is useless for this work. You may ask "how could the acids be different? They are both just sulfuric acid." But commercial sulfuric acid just doesn't work for some reason. Seems like science has more to learn about acids. I have strong Nitric acid -- could I just dissolve the coppper sulfate in it, then distill?

B. And also, what is the best way to distill sulfuric acid? I have a 2 liter flask and heating mantle, and then a graham style condenser. Is there a way to distill the sulfuric acid in a sealed system, or do I need to run a ventilation hose from the receiver flask?

Thanks to those who help...

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Re: Making sulfuric acid
« Reply #1 on: October 14, 2007, 03:28:06 AM »
But commercial sulfuric acid just doesn't work for some reason. Seems like science has more to learn about acids.

Seems like you have more to learn about science ;) Most likely you need either sulphuric acid with copper traces (hence 'normal' acid doesn't work) or you need acid without some impurities present in commercial stuff.
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Offline NickNick

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Re: Making sulfuric acid
« Reply #2 on: October 14, 2007, 01:51:20 PM »
Ah, but it is not I who needs to learn more about science. It has be PROVEN that both sulfuric acids are chemically identifcal, but only the one made from native copper sulfate (and there is no copper in the final acid) will work for this process I'm doing.

Nature attaches something to the minerals she forms, and science can not explain it with simple chemistry since an identical chemical synthized in the lab does not have the same effects. This apparently can only be explained by quantum physics, as there seems to be some other subatomic particles attached to the natural sulfuric acid.


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Re: Making sulfuric acid
« Reply #3 on: October 14, 2007, 01:54:01 PM »
Snake oil.
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Offline Valdorod

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It is due to Sulfuric acid cis/tans ratios
« Reply #4 on: October 15, 2007, 12:19:45 PM »
While I cannot give insight into how to actually synthesize sulfuric acid to produce the one that you need I can tell you that different synthesis methods lead to different ratios of cis/trans isomers for sulfuric acid.  Furthermore several articles have been written on using computer models to understand how it occurs. 

Sulfuric acid has a tendency to form hydrates, the acids will produce small clusters containing a few water molecules. At 298 K and 50% relative humidity, a cluster with one sulfuric acid will contain about 1.5 waters (this estimate is based on equilibrium constants measured by Hanson and Eisele. [Hanson, D. R.; Eisele, F. L. J. Phys. Chem. A 2000, 104, 1715]  Also the critical cluster has been measured and it contains from 7 to 13 sulfuric acids at a relative humidity of 2.3-15.3%.6 At 236 K and ca. 50% reltive humidity, the critical cluster should have 4 or 5 SAs. Thus, it is important to understand the acid-water and acid-acid interactions in clusters having several SAs to gain some insight of this nucleation process.

The manner in which sulfuric acid is prepared affects how these hydrates are formed.  More importantly the ratio of the cis and trans structures of the hydrated sulfuric acid clusters depends on the how sulfuric acid is synthesized and not on the purity of the acid.  There is some research on the various isomeric structures of the hydrated clusters of sulfuric acid, H2SO4(H2O)n (n = 1-5).  It turns out that Due to the small energy difference between trans and cis conformations about two OH groups of sulfuric acid, there are three types of isomeric forms of the hydrated clusters of sulfuric acid which involve the proton nontransferred trans conformer, the proton transferred trans conformer, and the proton nontransferred cis conformer of sulfuric acid. In the case of transoid H2SO4, the proton transferred ion-pair structures become more stable than the proton nontransferred structures as the number of water molecules increases. The hydrated clusters of the cis conformation remain neutral hydrogen-bonded structures even if the number of water molecules increases. All stable clusters tend to form multi-cyclic structures. While both protons of sulfuric acid participate in cyclic hydrogen bonding in the neutral structures, the OH group of HSO4- in the ion-pair structures remains dangling because the counterion H3O+ prefers to make strong hydrogen bonds with water molecules and/or the HSO4- moiety.  Take a look at the following 20 year old article Kurdi, L.; Kochanski, E. Chem. Phys. Lett. 1989, 158, 111

Valdo

Offline NickNick

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Re: Making sulfuric acid
« Reply #5 on: October 15, 2007, 05:33:03 PM »
Wow thanks Valdo! That was a great explanation of why the sulfuric acid is different from today's commercial sulfuric acid. For a while they were selling sulfuric acid made with the lead chamber process, and that is the kind that works for the experiments I'm conducting.



Offline NickNick

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Re: Making sulfuric acid
« Reply #6 on: February 08, 2008, 07:26:42 PM »
On another thread about making sulfuric acid, they claim SO3 will explode when it interacts with water.

But what about the method shown here:
http://cavemanchemistry.com/cavebook/chsaltpeter3.html


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