DFliyerz - 11-10-2017 at 14:07
Earlier today I was thinking about ways to make thionyl chloride, and saw a post on here suggesting that you could react dichlorine monoxide and
sulfur to form thionyl chloride. Using my admittedly bad skills with chemical thermodynamics, I tried calculating the enthalpy for this reaction and
got around -281 kJ/mol. Is there any reason why this wouldn't work, and if so, what would prevent it from working?
ninhydric1 - 11-10-2017 at 15:03
Try calculating the entropy and the Gibbs free energy. Then, calculate a temperature (if possible) at which the reaction is spontaneous. It will give
you a clue if the reaction works.
woelen - 11-10-2017 at 22:38
Do you intyend to do this in practice? Making Cl2O is quite difficult. I never managed to make a decent/visible quantity of Cl2O as a gas. It should
be possible by leading Cl2 over damp freshly precipitated HgO, but I never tried that. Another method seems to be reacting Cl2 with damp Na2CO3. I
tried that, but the reaction was total failure. No Cl2O at all.
DFliyerz - 11-10-2017 at 23:02
I might, if I have a particularly good use for thionyl chloride. It's unfortunate that you couldn't get the Na2CO3 method for making Cl2O to work
though, since that's what I was planning to use.
This patent appears to have some interesting insights into the manufacture of Cl2O by this method.
[Edited on 10-12-2017 by DFliyerz]
DFliyerz - 12-10-2017 at 10:32
Based on some calculations with my very limited knowledge of thermochemistry, I got the ΔG of the reaction at 25°C as -291 kJ, so I think it would
work. Now there's just the matter of being willing to perform such a dangerous and smelly experiment.