Making Sulfuric Acid From Epsom Salts
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- Опубліковано 9 лют 2025
- Sulfuric acid is such a necessary item used in a multitude of chemistry experiments. Obtaining it can be done several ways, including using the electrolysis of a solution of Epsom Salts/Magnesium Sulfate, which I explore here. The ingredients are cheap making this a financial win also.
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I really enjoyed your teaching section of the video. And I really really enjoyed watching you make sulfuric acid in a way I've never seen. I appreciate your videos!
Thank you!!
A little tip, keep some of the acid to kickstart the next run.
I was also messing around with the idea of making sulfuric acid through epsom salt, and i found that a really easy and inexpensive way was to heat and melt a mixture of epsom salt and oxalic acid. The two powders melted together forming a white milky looking liquid, which contained the sulfuric acid. You can then easily just distill off the sulfuric acid. I also found that mixing in dry potassium nitrate with the other powders, then heating it resulted in the formation of nitric acid vapor and nitrogen dioxide, which i also just distilled off.
Very nice approach!
Thank you! Cheers!
I would like to point out that the Camber process is by no means the standard for sulfuric acid production today. Today, H2SO4 is produced by the oxidation of SO2 over vanadium pentoxide catalysts. This produces SO3, which is then dissolved in concentrated sulfuric acid. When SO3 dissolves in concentrated sulfuric acid, disulfuric acid is formed, which reacts with H2O to form sulfuric acid again.
Why the "di" step? Couldn't the H2SO4 be made by directly bubbling the trioxide directly into distilled water?
One more note: I advise against estimating the concentration of the acid based on the pH value. Just because a solution has a pH value of 1 does not mean that it is particularly concentrated. Gastric juice has a pH of 1 - 1.5 even though it contains only 0.5% HCl.
Thank you I am aware. However, I am limited in ways that I can show something is acidic or basic.
Great video!! Very informative :) If you were to estimate what concentration the ´H2SO4 is at in the pot when it reaches it's max, and also after the boil down, when it reached about a PH 1, what concentration are we talking then? I had a thought that one could concentrate the acid in a safe way if one had a vacuum chamber by lowering the boiling temp for water and pull it out that way. Do you think that would work?
excellemt presentation.
Many thanks!
What if you take a ile of epsom salt thermally decompose it so2 must be released ,bubbtle it peroxide ,way faster
Wont there be some magnesium sulfate contamination in this? Some ions inevitably leak back across the wrong way (less then higher the voltage I believe).
Hoe do you remove that impurity?
There isn't. The electrical draw of each ion is strong enough to prevent them from going "backwards". Unless you turned the power off and let it sit for a bit the ions do not change their position. It's like magnets. You wouldn't ever have two north facing north magnets and have them attract. It just wouldn't happen. They always repel.
@@cranialconstruction2218 I'll take your word for it. I just saw someone else doing this method and commenting that there would be some contamination from backflow. I assumed that was due to increasing osmotic forces over the membrane.
I also heard that a so-called "salt bridge" (the gel type at least) would have less of this problem with better separation.
I will read up some more on it and check that I haven't misunderstood something. Thanks for your answer.
Really cool video
Thanks!
Great video!! Subscribed!!
Hello, thank you for your efforts. Is it possible to make sulfuric acid by mixing aluminum sulfate with water and HCl acid? What is the correct way to do this, please
I love that lil finger lmao
I got the idea from a movie. Can't remember which one anymore.
If you can distill sulfuric acid by distilling...can you not put electrodes in sulfuric acid to just drive off the water from the sulfuric acid without distilling?
Thanks for the question! I'm not exactly sure what you're asking though. Could you please write it out in more detail? Thanks.
I don’t think it works like that B-rad ☹️
Do you have another site that your on that dosent take videos down?
I don't but highly considering it
Sir, will sodium sulfate work for the process too?
when are you gonna construct a cranium
Haha...well, it's an analogy for learning. Like building a cranium is building your brain. But, maybe someday it'll be for real.
Is that the Heptahydrate? Or did you knock off the water first?
No, it's heptahydrate. Right out of the bag.
So when the amperage begins to drop, does the system now constitute a charged battery?
It could be if you moved the cathode into the pot with the anode. The clay pot is really too much of a resistance to get any meaningful current otherwise.
You're a treasure!
Can you check how much epsom salt is left in the magnesium hydroxide solution?
It's possible but a bit involved
I would have left that running a lot longer.
Also, anything you can do to increase the surface area is helpful - both the membrane and the electrodes.
I used to do a lot of copper sulfate electrolysis befire I had access to good sulfuric acid. It is a long slow process. MgSO4 seems more economical. But still, a lot if time for just a few mL.
I was just wondering if you could make a strong acid using electrolysis. Where strong acids available before the 1600s?
Distillation should likely work
New sub.
Awesome thank you!
Could have titrated it, that might have been a bit more useful that just pH
You probably already know this but in case you don’t: PYREX is the high quality borosilicate brand, whereas you’ve got pyrex which uses shit glass so don’t ever heat that dish in the oven or microwave.
Great video!
Good reminder. PYREX soldletters. Or something some time back and now a third party is stamping their crap with the name in lower case leters.
Not relevant to the reaction but the lead chamber process is not still widely used. The Contact process using a vanadium pentoxide catalyst to oxidize sulfur dioxide to sulfur trioxide is now the dominant industrial process.
In my head i see the sulfuric acid eating the pH paper 📃 i dont know why.
What are the amps in amperage per decameter²?
(for some some reason most literature seems to use 100 square centimeters as a standard electrode area)
Convert by dividing the current per cm by 100
I like purple
Would this work similarly with a nitrate salt to make nitric acid?
I don't know about directly with this electrolysis method, but adding concentrated sulfuric acid to potassium or sodium nitrate will produce nitric acid. You can find how with a search. So if not directly, it can be a step in the process.
Nice
Good info for Europeans. Unfortunately most unglazed pots seem to have a hole in the bottom, which complicates things.
Is there a more professional membrane than flower pot that can be used? I feel like with the pottery over here half of the damn thing would dissolve from the acid.
Yes, but they’re pretty expensive unless you make your own. The mysteriusbhoice channel has some really good instructions.
What is the concentration ? No one ever bothers to give the concentration
It's difficult to tell. I didn't have enough to do a reliable weight measurement.
okay
Must be much much easier with copper sulfate electrolysis.
How so?
Now show us how to make nitric acid
I do in an earlier video: ua-cam.com/video/ZaskGc06-4U/v-deo.html
"slowly speed up" lol language is so interesting
Algo booost!
H cell saves all this