Inquartation with sulfuric acid

[pugle1]

This is a copy of a PM sent to ElectricAngel regarding Nitric prices in Canada.... some of our Canadian refiners might find it useful....


I contacted AlphaChem in Mississauga, Ontario.

These are the prices as quoted to me:

Hydrochloric ASC - 4 liter - $28.00 Cdn
Nitric Acid 69.0% - 70% ASC - 500 ml - $31.50 Cdn (Min 1 bottle but sold in six bottle cases)
Sulfuric Acid ASC S/S - 500 ml - $41.60

Try http://www.alphachem.ca - there is a "contact us" link there as well.

Hope that helps

Regards,

Paul

 

[skippy]

I tried dissolving some silver with sulfuric acid in a small flask ported with a tube to a scrubber (A bubbler would be a bad idea in case of suck back - it would be a very dangerous, deadly, in fact the whole process has extreme potential for danger). The reaction started ok, but slowed down drastically before much silver was dissolved. On some thinking I figured it must be that the reaction was producing water which was killing the reaction by diluting the sulfuric. I did some more reading, and when this method was state of the art the process was done in big iron stills that were entirely kept at a very hot temperature to drive off any water formed and could also port off the SO2 for treatment. The only way I can see around using a fancy apparatus like this would be to use a open beaker which would allow the water to disipate. This seems like too much to subject a fume hood to unless it's small scale. Dunno though. It's an interesting method, which made sense back then because nitric was expensive before they figured out how to synthesize nitric acid from nitrogen. It would be nice if there was an easy way to make it work but I can't see it.