Sulfuric acid historical processes

Historically, soda ash was produced by extracting the ashes of certain plants, such as Spanish barilla, and evaporating the resultant Hquor. The first large scale, commercial synthetic plant employed the LeBlanc (Nicolas LeBlanc (1742—1806)) process (5). In this process, salt (NaCl) reacts with sulfuric acid to produce sodium sulfate and hydrochloric acid. The sodium sulfate is then roasted with limestone and coal and the resulting sodium carbonate—calcium sulfide mixture (black ash) is leached with water to extract the sodium carbonate. The LeBlanc process was last used in 1916—1917 it was expensive and caused significant pollution. 

White phosphorus also can be produced by a wet process using phosphoric acid, a process that was practiced historically in commercial production. In this method the starting material, phosphoric acid, usually is prepared in large vats by reacting phosphate rock with sulfuric acid ... 

Sodium carbonate was made historically by the Leblanc process. The first commercial production was carried out by the Leblanc process. In this process, sodium chloride was treated with sulfuric acid to produce sodium sulfate and hydrochloric acid. Heating the sodium sulfate with coal and limestone produced a black ash that contained sodium carbonate, calcium sulfide, unreacted coal, and calcium carbonate. Sodium carbonate was separated from the black ash by leaching with water. The overall reaction is as follows ... 

Sulfuric acid is manufactured by two processes namely, the chamber process and the contact process. The chamber process was discovered in 1746 and was used to produce sulfuric acid for over a century. This process was replaced hy the contact process which has a lower production cost and yields a more concentrated acid needed for most industrial applications. The chamber process is obsolete now but for historical interest it is outlined below. 

Historical. Accdg to Kirk Othmer(Ref I2,p 245), the fact that a chem reaction can be aided by the addn of certain substances was known to the alchemists in the Middle Ages and by the end of 18th and beginning of 19th century several industrial processes were known such as hydrolysis of starch by acids(Parmentier, 1781) and the lead-chamber sulfuric acid manuf... 

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]. 

Potassium Sulfate Production 15.5.2.1 Mannheim Process - Historically potassium sulfate has been made primarily from KCl and sulfuric acid (and a small amount from KCl and SO2) when the byproduct HQ was the dominant product. However, over the years the HCI market has had more competition, and natural K2SO4 with lower capital and operating costs has begun to dominate its production in some countries with natural complex salts. 

Isopropyl alcohol (IPA) has been called the first petrochemical. Both historically and today, it is prepared by sulfuric acid-mediated indirect hydration of propylene (see equations below and Fig. 22.28). Originally it was the source of most of the acetone used in the world. Now, this route must compete with acetone derived from the cumene oxidation process, in which cumene is converted to equimolar amounts of phenol and acetone. Between 1959 and 1978 the amount of acetone derived from IPA dehydrogenation declined from 80 percent to 34 percent, and the amount of IPA used for this purpose declined from 47 percent in 1978 to 12 percent in 1990. 

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