plante1999
International Hazard
Posts: 1936
Registered: 27-12-2010
Member Is Offline
Mood: Mad as a hatter
|
|
Fixing sulphur of the air
Not very long ago, in my science class I saw a bottle of mercury in the reserve which was dated from 1999, the bottle had a a cap with a very bad seal
(metal to glass). Most of the mercury was now a black powder floting on top of the mercury. I suspect this powder to be mercury sulphide.
If one made an oppen ball mill, and mixed for days, he could extract some sulphur from the air as black cinnabar. The black cinnabar could be purified
to get the mercury and the sulphur. The mercury would be re used in the ball mill.
In country with very low occurence of sulphur, in pyrites and natively, it might be interesting to fix the sulphur from hydrogen sulphide in the air.
One could argue about mercury toxicity, but silver powder could be used instead of the mercury, abeit with lower efficiency.
What do you think?
I never asked for this.
|
|
|
hissingnoise
International Hazard
Posts: 3940
Registered: 26-12-2002
Member Is Offline
Mood: Pulverulescent!
|
|
I think you should buy your sulphur and forget about attempting harvesting the absolutely miniscule quantities air contains!
And why would you assume the substance in the mercury to be the sulphide?
|
|
|
plante1999
International Hazard
Posts: 1936
Registered: 27-12-2010
Member Is Offline
Mood: Mad as a hatter
|
|
Because it is know that mercury form the black sulphide in air... and it used to be quite pure mercury. Certainly not an oxide, as mercury do not
oxidize with oxygen. However mercury oxydize with oxigen AND hydrogen sulphide.
PS: I buy my sulphur.
[Edited on 28-1-2013 by plante1999]
I never asked for this.
|
|
|
vmelkon
National Hazard
Posts: 669
Registered: 25-11-2011
Location: Canada
Member Is Offline
Mood: autoerotic asphyxiation
|
|
Why not use silver instead? All silverware gets covered by sulfide.
|
|
|
plante1999
International Hazard
Posts: 1936
Registered: 27-12-2010
Member Is Offline
Mood: Mad as a hatter
|
|
In the first post I made I already said silver could be used, but it is less efficient, as it have less surface area than a liquid when mixed, also
its reactivity may be a bit different.
I never asked for this.
|
|
|
Mailinmypocket
International Hazard
Posts: 1351
Registered: 12-5-2011
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
|
|
The question is: how much mercury would you need in order to produce enough sulfur to be profitable and to satisfy industry needs? With the cost of
mercury it would be cheaper to import the sulfur rather than have a process plant that fixes it from air.
It is an interesting though but I don't see how it would be a viable production route to sulfur on a large scale...
|
|
|
garage chemist
chemical wizard
Posts: 1803
Registered: 16-8-2004
Location: Germany
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
|
|
The other way round it makes sense: using sulfur powder to fix mercury vapors from air. I have done this myself with a PE bottle of mercury that I've
been storing inside a closed glass jar with some sulfur on the bottom. Over the years, the sulfur has turned completely black from the Hg vapors
escaping from the closed PE bottle and reacting with the sulfur.
Fixing sulfur from air with mercury is nonsense. You will evaporate so much mercury into the air that you're filtering that this will create horrific
environmental pollution.
Desulfurization of crude oil creates so much elemental sulfur as a byproduct that this satisfies most of the industrial sulfur needs. Sulfuric acid
plants in most of the world have long stopped roasting pyrites for their SO2 production and are instead burning elemental sulfur from oil refineries.
And if crude oil ever becomes scarce, they can still switch back to pyrites, of which there are unlimited amounts on earth.
There is absolutely no need for alternative sulfur sources.
|
|
|
bbartlog
International Hazard
Posts: 1139
Registered: 27-8-2009
Location: Unmoored in time
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
|
|
| Quote: | | Desulfurization of crude oil creates so much elemental sulfur as a byproduct that this satisfies most of the industrial sulfur needs.
|
And to the extent that it doesn't, it's probably just because of transportation and tariff issues. The stuff piles up in massive mounds near the
desulfurization facilities.
http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-1856232/stock-photo-a-sulfur...
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/5480021
That said, it would be a neat project to try and extract a weighable quantity of sulfur from the air. Feasibility might well depend a lot on where you
lived (easier in Beijing than in Reykjavik, I bet).
[Edited on 28-1-2013 by bbartlog]
The less you bet, the more you lose when you win.
|
|
|
plante1999
International Hazard
Posts: 1936
Registered: 27-12-2010
Member Is Offline
Mood: Mad as a hatter
|
|
Quote: Originally posted by bbartlog  |
That said, it would be a neat project to try and extract a weighable quantity of sulfur from the air. Feasibility might well depend a lot on where you
lived (easier in Beijing than in Reykjavik, I bet).
[Edited on 28-1-2013 by bbartlog] |
I agree that it would be a nice project to try. One could use silver powder instead of mercury, no mercury vapor but probably less efficient.
It might be interesting to know how much of, lets say one mole of mercury/silver, sulphur can fix per month. One could put a sulphur scrubber after
the apparatus with the mercury. When the scrubber is full, refine for the mercury and the sulphur, put the sulphur back in the scrubber, and the
mercury in the reaction chamber. If it is still worthless, then silver powder could be used. I do not own silver, so I can't test... And I do not want
to set-up an apparatus for only 30g of mercury during a few months.
I never asked for this.
|
|
|
Endimion17
International Hazard
Posts: 1468
Registered: 17-7-2011
Location: shores of a solar sea
Member Is Offline
Mood: speeding through time at the rate of 1 second per second
|
|
Have you checked the amounts of sulphur compounds in the air? We're talking about traces, even in areas with great biological activity. I'd compare it
with Nazis trying to extract gold from the sea.
It's a completely worthless, useless process... unless it's just for fun, of course, but if that's fun, you're a funny man. 
Even then it would be very difficult, because you'd have to mechanically filter the air, push it for months and months using pumps, using
sophisticated filters (Cottrell's precipitator, fine mesh filters, etc.).
There's lots of things in air that would end up as crud in your metal scrubber. Isolating elemental sulphur from such crud, and we're talking about
great amounts of metals needed, would be a daunting task, close to the Curies and their several year long nightmare to get a tiny amount of radium
chloride (or bromide, whatever) from huge amounts of ore.
For starters, you might want to try move to a different location. I recommend heavily polluted cities in eastern Europe, or even better, poorly known
cities in China which produce the "environmentally friendly stuff" that the West buys thinking it is saving the planet. 
|
|
|
watson.fawkes
International Hazard
Posts: 2793
Registered: 16-8-2008
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
|
|
The best "air" for trying this idea out is coming out of the chimney of a coal-fired power plant.
I should remark that H2S isn't going to be the dominant sulfur species after very long, say a few days. Sulfur oxide species come to
dominate. See Residence Time for Hydrogen Sulfide in the Atmosphere Literature Search Results for initial data.
|
|
|
blogfast25
International Hazard
Posts: 10562
Registered: 3-2-2008
Location: Neverland
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
|
|
And a good thing too, lest this earth develop into a planetary stinkbomb! 
|
|
|
![[*]](images/xpblue/default_icon.gif){kind=icon}
