[_rob]

I was speaking to my girlfriends father about this and he asked me to do a little research; imagine having a jar of conc sulphuric acid, and adding a drop of water, the effect would surely be a large expulsion of heat as energy, would there be any way of using the sun to concentrate or manufacture sulphuric acid in order to be able to carry out this reaction to harness the energy that is released?? Answers please!!!, Rob

[enahs]

There is a lot of energy in the form of heat released when acids (or bases) neutralize; thought it takes a lot; and most of the energy is wasted in heating up the water. But as you can imagine, a substance that is highly reactive with water is hard to find laying around the earth (as if it is exposed to the environment it will react with the water!). As such, it takes a lot of energy to make acids and bases that we use in Chemistry.

If you are harnessing the energy of the sun, why use it to make another fuel source? You are just going to lose energy efficiency that way.

[Honclbrif]

If I can follow your reasoning: you are thinking of the heat released when sulfuric acid is hydrated. You are right that it is quite exothermic initially, but as the solution gets more dilute, less energy is released. Therefore, you are looking for a way to use solar energy to re-concentrate the acid after it has been diluted to the point of uselessness.

You can distill water out of a solution of sulfuric acid until it is only 2% water, at this point it forms an azeotrope. Hypothetically, you can use solar energy to do this, but you really need to consider how much energy this process takes as well as how corrosive sulfuric acid is and balance that against the amount of energy you can actually "store" in the concentrated acid.

Even fairly dilute solutions of sulfuric acid are astonishingly corrosive, and a "battery" powered by the hydration of sulfuric acid would have to be made of some pretty special stuff. Especially considering what would happen if the battery was damaged and leaked. Honestly, I think there are better ways of storing energy harvested from the sun.

[enahs]

So you are saying, add sulfuric acid to water to make heat, turn heat into energy ala geothermal process, and essentially use the sun to boil off water and get back concentrated acid?

Heat engines are not super efficient, and over time you are going to lose or decompose the acid in various ways. It is not all that hard to decompose sulfuric acid.

So why not just use photovoltaic/solar panels and skip all this more complicated mechanical parts?

[Honclbrif]

So you are saying, add sulfuric acid to water to make heat, turn heat into energy ala geothermal process, and essentially use the sun to boil off water and get back concentrated acid?

Heat engines are not super efficient, and over time you are going to lose or decompose the acid in various ways. It is not all that hard to decompose sulfuric acid.

So why not just use photovoltaic/solar panels and skip all this more complicated mechanical parts?

More or less my thoughts as well, especially the last part.