Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Sulfuric acid is one of the most important compounds made by the chemical industry. It is
used to make, literally, hundreds of compounds needed by almost every industry.
Data from:
1. Federal State Statistics Service: Russian Federation 2011
Manufacture of sulfuric acid
Easily the most important source of sulfur is its recovery from natural gas and oil. These
contain sulfur compounds, both organic and hydrogen sulfide both of which must be removed
before they are used as fuels or chemical feedstock.
Another important source of sulfur is as sulfur dioxide from metal refining. Many metal ores
occur as sulfides and are roasted to form an oxide and sulfur dioxide, for example, in the
manufacture of lead:
Other metals manufactured from their sulfide ores include copper, nickel and zinc.
Worldwide about 35% of the sulfur is obtained as sulfur dioxide from sulfide ore roasting and
this is increasing, as plants which traditionally passed the sulfur dioxide to atmosphere are
recovering it as sulfuric acid. In particular, China makes most of its sulfuric acid from pyrites,
an iron sulfide ore.
Sulfuric acid is also obtained from ammonium sulfate, a by-product in the manufacture
of poly(methyl 2-methylpropenoate) and also recovered from 'spent' (i.e. used) sulfuric acid.
If sulfur is the feedstock, it must first be converted to sulfur dioxide. Molten sulfur is sprayed
into a furnace and burnt in a blast of dry air at about 1300 K. The sulfur burns with a
characteristic blue flame:
As excess air is used the emerging gas contains about 10-12% sulfur dioxide and 10%
oxygen, by volume. The gases are very hot and so are passed through heat exchangers (waste
heat boilers).
The gases are cooled to about 700 K and the water in the surrounding boiler pipes is
converted into steam. In manufacturing one tonne of sulfuric acid, one tonne of high pressure
steam is also produced.
(c) Conversion of sulfur dioxide to sulfur trioxide (The Contact Process)
A typical plant contains one cylindrical vessel which acts as a fixed bed reactor with four
separate beds of catalyst, known as a converter, heated to 700 K, through which the sulfur
dioxide and air pass:
Figure 2 Vanadium(v) oxide catalyst used for the manufacture of sulfuric acid.
The gas inlet duct can be seen in the middle of the picture.
By kind permission of Haldor Topse
The sulfur trioxide formed from the third bed (and the small amount from the fourth bed) are
now converted to
sulfuric acid.
Sulfur trioxide reacts with water and the reaction can be expressed as:
Figure 4 A line diagram illustrating a heat exchanger used in the manufacture of sulfur
trioxide.
The gases not absorbed contain about 95% nitrogen, 5% oxygen, and traces of sulfur dioxide.
The gas stream is filtered to remove any traces of sulfuric acid mist and is returned to the
atmosphere using a high stack.