Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Sulphuric by V2O5

Contrabasso - 22-6-2010 at 14:09

Simply, Having found some V2O5, and finding sulphuric hard to buy retail, Can I develop the catalytic process? Anyone want to consider this with me on a theory basis first.

Simply
S + O2 --> SO2 ..........Burn sulphur
SO2 + O --> SO3 ........Over vanadium pentoxide catalyst. at about 600C

If I get a nichrome wire spiral in a glass tube with catalyst on the nichrome then I should be able to pre-heat the cat and then get the heat to sustain the process. Burn sulphur under the pickup tube pass this through the cat tube and on into a dropping funnel with a dreschel bottle top. Several dreschel bottles to scrub the output then draw the gas through the whole thing with an aspirator pump driven by a pump in a bucket of water.

Start with conc acid in the dropping flask and let the oleum out through the tap, dilute as needed.
I can't immediately see how to get the dreschel bottle scrubbers to feed liquid upstream as the concentration of acid increases. So that you can add water at the process end and have oleum dropping out in the middle as product.

Ingredients Sulphur and electricity and air, catalyst vanadium pentoxide.
Can you monitor and control the cat temp by passing and controlling a current through the nichrome?

The old V2O5 process used sulphide ores for economy but any arsenic poisoned the catalyst. Given modern access to refinery sulphur then the catalyst should have a reasonable life. We in the UK can actually buy OTC a tin can with 300g of sulphur and a wick! Specially made for fumigating greenhouses.

Lambda-Eyde - 22-6-2010 at 14:25

http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=8923