Making sulfuric acid industrially

Sulfur is of major industrial importance. Most of the sulfur that is produced is used to make sulfuric acid, but an appreciable amount is used to vulcanize rubber (Section 19.12). 

The industrial processing of copper(l) sulfide to produce copper metal involves roasting (heating) the solid ore in the presence of oxygen gas to produce the metal and sulfur dioxide gas. (The sulfur dioxide is used to make sulfuric acid.) Calculate the mass of copper(l) sulfide needed to produce 70.0 metric tons (1 metric ton = 1 X 10 g) of copper by roasting. 

When sulfur is burned in air, it reacts with oxygen to form sulfur dioxide, which is used to preserve fruit and as an antibacterial agent. Sulfur dioxide released into the atmosphere reacts with water vapor to form one of the acids in acid rain. More than 90% of the sulfur dioxide produced is used to make sulfuric acid. This inexpensive acid is used by so many industries that the amount of it produced can indicate the strength of an economy. About half the sulfuric acid produced is used to make fertilizers. Products ranging from steel to paper to paints also depend on this acid. 

To be historically correct, there were earlier examples of metal-mediated homogeneous catalysis. For example, the Hg -catalyzed hydration of acetylene to acetaldehyde became an industrial process in 1912. There is an intermediate /r-acetylene complex to activate the substrate. The lead chamber process to make sulfuric acid (NO catalysis) is even older but does not involve metals or metal complexes as catalysts [134]. 

In planning resource-based industries in remote regions, where transport of low-value byproducts can be costly. An important case in Australia is sulfur dioxide emissions capture from metallurgical smelters to make sulfuric acid. Sulfuric acid can be used for phosphate fertilizer manufacture, but depends on availability of phosphate rock deposit, natural gas supply (for ammonia production), and infrastructure for transporting the fertilizer to markets. 

Most SO2 produced industrially is used to make sulfuric acid. It is first oxidized to SO3 by heating in O2 over a catalyst ... 

Percent yield is important in the cost effectiveness of many industrial manufacturing processes. For example, the sulfur shown in Figure 11.9 is used to make sulfuric acid (H2SO4). Sulfuric acid is an important chemical because it is a raw material used to make products such as fertilizers, detergents, pigments, and textiles. The cost of sulfuric acid affects the cost of many of the consumer items you use every day. The first two steps in the manufacturing process are shown below. 

The reversible reaction involving the conversion of sulfur dioxide to sulfur trioxide is central to the industrial process for making sulfuric acid. 

By-product hydrogen sulfide must be removed from the hydrogen product and can be used for making sulfuric acid, an important industrial chemical, or can be sequestered with the carbon dioxide. 

Sulfur is used extensively in making sulfuric acid, the most widely used industrial chemical in the world. It is also used in paper manufacture, petroleum refining, dye production, insecticide synthesis, and fertilizer production, to name a few uses. 

The chemical industry makes sulfuric acid in the Contact process (page 129). The raw materials needed are sulfur, air and water. Sulfur can be mined from underground (see Figure 13.1b at the start of this chapter). Poland and the USA export sulfur around the world. The sulfur extracted from the impurities in fossil fuels can also be used in the Contact process. 

Although silver iodide is the least photosensitive of the three halides, it has the broadest wavelength sensitivity in the visible spectmm. This feature makes silver iodide particularly useful in the photographic industry. It resists reduction by metals, but is reduced quantitatively by zinc and iron in the presence of sulfuric acid. 

Agriculture is the largest industry for sulfur consumption. Historically, the production of phosphate fertilizers has driven the sulfur market. Phosphate fertilizers account for approximately 60% of the sulfur consumed globally. Thus, although sulfur is an important plant nutrient in itself, its greatest use in the fertilizer industry is as sulfuric acid, which is needed to break down the chemical and physical stmcture of phosphate rock to make the phosphate content more available to plant life. Other mineral acids, as well as high temperatures, also have the abiUty to achieve this result. Because of market price and availabiUty, sulfuric acid is the most economic method. About 90% of sulfur used in the fertilizer industry is for the production of phosphate fertilizers. Based on this technology, the phosphate fertilizer industry is expected to continue to depend on sulfur and sulfuric acid as a raw material. 

Dioitroanthraquiaoae and 1,8-dinitroanthraquinone can also be prepared by nitration of anthraquiaone ia coaceatrated nitric acid (70). The 1,5-isomer can then be easily separated from the reaction mixture by filtration, since 1,8- or other isomers than 1,5-dinitroanthraquinone are completely dissolved in concentrated nitric acid. However, this process is unsuitable for industrial production for safety reasons the mixture of dinitroanthraquiaone and concentrated nitric acid forms a detonation mixture (71). Addition of sulfuric acid makes it possible to work outside the detonation area. 

Liquid/hquid reactions of industrial importance are fairly numerous. A hst of 26 classes of reactions with 61 references has been compiled by Doraiswamy and Sharma Heterogeneou.s Reactions, Wiley, 1984). They also indicate the kind of reactor normally used in each case. The reactions range from such prosaic examples as making soap with alkali, nitration of aromatics to make explosives, and alkylation of C4S with sulfuric acid to make improved gasoline, to some much less familiar operations. 

Before 1900 the large-scale production of nitric acid was based entirely on the reaction of concentrated sulfuric acid with NaNOa and KNOj (p. 407). The first successful process for making nitric acid directly from Ni and O2 was devised in 1903 by E. Birkeland and S. Eyde in Norway and represented the first industrial fixation of nitrogen ... 

Sulfuric acid is primarily used to make fertilizers. It is also used in other major industries such as detergents, paints, pigments, and pharmaceuticals. 

Most of the sulfuric acid produced by the chemical industry is used to make fertilizers. Fertilizers are produced using phosphorous, an essential nutrient that plants need to grow well. Phosphate is found in rocks, and these rocks are more soluble, or more easily dissolved, in water when broken down with sulfuric acid. Treating phosphate rocks this way releases phosphorous in a form that plant roots can absorb. 

Fixed Bed Reactors. In its most basic form, a fixed bed reactor consists of a cylindrical tube filled with catalyst pellets. Reactants flow through the catalyst bed and are converted into products. Fixed bed reactors are often referred to as packed bed reactors. They may be regarded as the workhorse of the chemical industry with respect to the number of reactors employed and the economic value of the materials produced. Ammonia synthesis, sulfuric acid production (by oxidation of S02 to S03), and nitric acid production (by ammonia oxidation) are only a few of the extremely high tonnage processes that make extensive use of various forms of packed bed reactors. 

Squire and Messel An early process for making oleum from sulfuric acid produced by the Chamber process. The acid was decomposed at red heat to sulfur dioxide, oxygen, and steam the steam was condensed out, and the remaining gases passed over platinized pumice to form sulfur trioxide, which was absorbed in more chamber acid. Invented by W. S. Squire and R. Messel in 1875 in London and first commercialized there. Messel was one of the founders of the Society of Chemical Industry and is still commemorated in that society by the biennial award of a medal. 

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