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Sciencemadness Discussion Board » Fundamentals » Responsible Practices » Sublimation of sulfur - should I worry?

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Draeger

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posted on 16-7-2020 at 15:21

Sublimation of sulfur - should I worry?

So, someone told me that sulfur is exceedingly volatile so I was wondering if it would be dangerous to melt the sulfur in a poorly ventilated area.

Collected elements:
Al, Cu, Ga, C (coal), S, Zn, Na

Collected compounds:

Inorganic:
NaOH; NaHCO3; MnCl2; MnCO3; CuSO4; FeSO4; aq. 30-33% HCl; aq. NaClO; aq. 9,5% ammonia; aq. 94-96% H2SO4; aq. 3% H2O2

Organic:
citric acid, sodium acetate, sodium citrate, petroleum, mineral oil

j_sum1

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posted on 16-7-2020 at 15:43

Not to worry.

The bigger issue is having it smolder or ignite in air producing SO2. This smells bad and is uncomfortable to breathe. But even SO2 from burning sulfur is mamageable in small quantities.

A classroom classic is to ignite some sulfur on a deflagrating spoon and pop it into a as jar with a few mL of water in the bottom. Then you can demonstrate the acidity of the H2SO3 produced. But some sulfur dioxide always escapes. I have done this numerous times in a large classroom lab utside of a fume hood without worries.

Melting sulfur is another classroom classic – there is a lot of investigation that can be done y heating to different temperatures for different times and then dropping in water. This produces different allotropes of sulfur inclding so-called plastic sulfur. Again I have done this often and even had umerous groups of students do it for themselves – without a fume cupboard. There relly are not any significant issues.

Syn the Sizer

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posted on 16-7-2020 at 18:20

Quote: Originally posted by j_sum1

A classroom classic is to ignite some sulfur on a deflagrating spoon and pop it into a as jar with a few mL of water in the bottom. Then you can demonstrate the acidity of the H2SO3 produced.

We did this in Grade 10 science in the 90's, the teacher broke us into groups of 2, each group had sulfur, a Bunsen burner, a steel spoon and an EM flask with a cork and some water.

We also had to water plants with the produced sulfurous acid to see how it grew.

Sciencemadness Discussion Board » Fundamentals » Responsible Practices » Sublimation of sulfur - should I worry?