sulfuric cell help

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solarnevo1

Active member
Joined
Jan 27, 2012
Messages
42
Can anyone link me the post with pictures for building striping cell? Sorry for my english is not perfect. What distance should be from cooper mesh and lead anod?
 
Hi thanks for help. Lot's of informations. I have problem with building a cell. I will buy 96 % sulfuric acid. In that post discusion is mostly how to make sulfuric from baterry acid. I need help with construction of cell. Is there any post how to make cell?
 
solarnevo1 said:
Hi thanks for help. Lot's of informations. I have problem with building a cell. I will buy 96 % sulfuric acid. In that post discusion is mostly how to make sulfuric from baterry acid. I need help with construction of cell. Is there any post how to make cell?
Click to expand...
(Emphasis added)

That would be something you wouldn't want to do anyway. I did once, and I was probably lucky to get away with it.
 
jason_recliner said:
solarnevo1 said:
Hi thanks for help. Lot's of informations. I have problem with building a cell. I will buy 96 % sulfuric acid. In that post discusion is mostly how to make sulfuric from baterry acid. I need help with construction of cell. Is there any post how to make cell?
Click to expand...
(Emphasis added)

That would be something you wouldn't want to do anyway. I did once, and I was probably lucky to get away with it.
Click to expand...
I hope this doesn't derail the thread entirely, but I'm confused. If battery acid is around 35% sulfuric, what's so bad about concentrating it? Or do you mean if you try to boil it rather than evaporate it?

I just concentrated some yesterday in a sand bath and made cold nitric with it, though I did stop the heat before I actually smelled SO2 or H2S...
 
It's just too dangerous, given the general availability of concentrated sulfuric acid all over the world except around me.
Yes it can be done. If you have a proper lab and a lot of experience, fine. But 200°C+ acid with fumes that will burn your flesh and lungs is perhaps not for everyone.

Try taking a bath with an alligator in the room, a toaster on the ledge, the toast is burning and you have a knife in your hand. Also your pet tarantula was there a minute ago, but now you're not sure where he is...
 
jason_recliner said:
It's just too dangerous, given the general availability of concentrated sulfuric acid all over the world except around me.
Yes it can be done. If you have a proper lab and a lot of experience, fine. But 200°C+ acid with fumes that will burn your flesh and lungs is perhaps not for everyone.

Try taking a bath with an alligator in the room, a toaster on the ledge, the toast is burning and you have a knife in your hand. Also your pet tarantula was there a minute ago, but now you're not sure where he is...
Click to expand...

wow you lead a fun life down there in Aussieland matey 8) 8)

Jon
 
upcyclist said:
jason_recliner said:
solarnevo1 said:
Hi thanks for help. Lot's of informations. I have problem with building a cell. I will buy 96 % sulfuric acid. In that post discusion is mostly how to make sulfuric from baterry acid. I need help with construction of cell. Is there any post how to make cell?
Click to expand...
(Emphasis added)

That would be something you wouldn't want to do anyway. I did once, and I was probably lucky to get away with it.
Click to expand...
I hope this doesn't derail the thread entirely, but I'm confused. If battery acid is around 35% sulfuric, what's so bad about concentrating it? Or do you mean if you try to boil it rather than evaporate it?

I just concentrated some yesterday in a sand bath and made cold nitric with it, though I did stop the heat before I actually smelled SO2 or H2S...
Click to expand...
Actually, the chemical that comes off at the end is SO3, sulfur trioxide, in the form of a lot of dense lily-white fumes - the chem books say "copious" fumes (look up copious). You certainly don't want to breathe even a little bit. They will gag a maggot. On the MSDS, SO3 has a Health hazard score of 3, the highest a chemical can get. Sodium cyanide also has a score of 3. To compare them.

SO3 http://www.sciencelab.com/msds.php?msdsId=9925153
NaCN http://www.sciencelab.com/msds.php?msdsId=9927711

Note that SO3 is also quite chemically reactive, with a score of 2

SO2 has a Health score of 2. I couldn't find a number for H2S Health but I know the gas is very very poisonous and explosive under some conditions. If I recall, it's more poisonous than SO2. Luckily, it really stinks (rotten egg smell) and it doesn't take very much to let you know it is present. If you want to know what SO2 smells like, smell some packaged dried apricots. You can buy them without SO2, but they are black and are not very appetizing. I used to like dried apricots before I became a refiner.

If you combine a strong acid with a sulfide ore or a sulfide chemical, H2S gas will come off. A strong acid plus a sulfite, like SMB, will produce SO2 gas.
 
Thanks for the correction, GSP.

To be clear, I'm evaporating, I'm not boiling, and I'm not distilling. It's not getting above 250°F or boiling, and the only thing I've seen come out of the flask is water vapor. It's slow, and I'm not up to 98% and I may not even be in the nineties.
 
upcyclist said:
Thanks for the correction, GSP.

To be clear, I'm evaporating, I'm not boiling, and I'm not distilling. It's not getting above 250°F or boiling, and the only thing I've seen come out of the flask is water vapor. It's slow, and I'm not up to 98% and I may not even be in the nineties.
Click to expand...
If you want to know what the approximate percentage of your evaporated H2SO4 is, it's quite simple. All you need is a beaker and a gram scale. Allow the H2SO4 to cool. Weigh or tare the beaker, put it on a level surface, and then add the H2SO4 to a mark. Weigh the acid. The specific gravity is the weight, in grams, divided by the volume, in ml. Then, find the specific gravity on this chart and read the %. The chart is for use at 60F, but a normal room temp of about 70F won't make much difference.

http://www.sschemical.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Conversion_Table.pdf

Beakers are not terribly accurate. I'm thinking the Kimax and Pyrex brands are guaranteed to be within +/- 5%, although, in my experience, they are better than that. I don't know about the cheaper brands. A graduated cylinder is more accurate than a beaker and a pipet or a volumetric flask are still more accurate.

Make sure the beaker or other measuring vessel is clean and dry. When measuring out the sulfuric, fill until the meniscus is on the line.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meniscus

The battery acid should have the fairly exact % on the label. You can first put it through the same procedure as above to determine your measuring error and then compensate for it. Or, just do it with distilled water. Or, both.
 
Aye, that's on my to-do list. I do have a graduated cylinder, and it is ±5% IIRC (100mL, ±5mL). Thanks for the link to the SG chart!

At first I assumed I wasn't set up for SG, then I realized--oh yeah, I'm not set up for specific gravity for gemology--partly because I haven't built a suspension for it, and partly because I don't have an accurate enough scale for the wee stones ;)
 

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