Sulfuric acid commercial uses

Two of the most important classes of chemical compounds are acids and bases. A small sampling of acids and bases found around the home demonstrates their importance in daily life. A few of these include fruit juice, aspirin, milk, ammonia, baking soda, vinegar, and soap. Beyond their presence in numerous household items, acids and bases are key ingredients in the chemical process industry. More sulfuric acid is produced than any other chemical in the United States with an annual production of 40 million tons. While the commercial applications of acids and bases illustrate their importance in everyday life, on a more fundamental level each one of us inherited our characteristics and genetic make-up through the acid DNA, deoxyribonucleic acid. 

Production of sulfuric acid, ammonia and phosphate rock (see Section 14.2) heads the inorganic chemical and mineral industries in the US. The oxidation of SO2 to SO3 (equation 26.32) is the first step in the Contact process, and in Section 15.8 we discussed how the yield of SO3 depends on temperature and pressure. At ordinary temperatures, the reaction is too slow to be commercially viable, while at very high temperatures, equilibrium 26.32 shifts to the left, decreasing the yield of SO3. 

The first working principle of the supercapacitor is the EDL mechanism, and which was first described in a US patent in the 1950s [16]. The high surface area containing carbon electrode was immersed in sulfuric acid electrolytes to collect the polarized charge. Later, a wide usage of commercialized aqueous-electrolyte... 

Acid zeolite catalysts offer a very good alternative for the clean synthesis of these sulfur containing substances. A suitable feed stock is the 4-isopropenyl-l-methyl-1-cyclohexene. In the presence of a commercial beta-zeolite (25) hydrogen sulfide is added to the autoclave at a reaction temperature of 50°C at a pressure of 17 bar. The conversion is 65.1% and the selectivity to 1-p-menthene-8-thiol is 43.9%. These are very promising results and they can be improved by using a commercial H-US-Y zeolite which rendered a conversion of 76.8% and a selectivity of 64.3% (62). 

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