Production of Sulphuric Acid and the Haber Process

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Production of Sulphuric acid
Sulphuric acid in high concentrations that is required for various industrial processes is currently
being produced through the contact process and is pegged on the catalytic oxidation of sulfur
dioxide to form sulfur trioxide. Initially, platinum was used as the catalyst for the reaction but
this was abolished owing to its susceptibility too impurities and instead vanadium (V) oxide was
adopted (Xiang, Huang, Lv & Bai, 2018). Besides being a very economical method of
production of concentrated sulphuric acids in comparison to the preceding lead chamber process,
the contact process also generate oleum and sulphur trioxide.
There are mainly three stages that are involved in the contact process:
 Making of sulfur dioxide
 Conversion of sulfur dioxide into sulfur trioxide (which is a reversible reaction)
 Conversion of sulfur IV oxide to sulfur VI oxide
Stage 1
Sulfur can begot from two main sources, importation or from the impurities found in fossil fuels.
It is imported from either Poland or USA and can be obtained from impurities such as coal that
are found in fossil fuels (Gierman et al., 2017). The initial stage of the contact process involves
the burning of sulfur in a lot of air to form sulfur dioxide gas. The reaction that takes place is as
shown in the equation below:
Sulfur+ Oxygen Sulfur VI oxide
S+O2 SO2

Another way of obtaining sulfur IV oxide is through the decomposition of the sulfide ores for
example pyrites in the presence of excess oxygen as illustrated in the equation below:
4FeS2+11O2 2Fe2O3+8SO2
In both cases, excess oxygen is used to ensure that the sulfur dioxide generated by the end of
stage 1 is sufficiently already mixed with enough oxygen in prepared for the subsequent stage
(Sarma, Ayadi, Brar & Berry, 2017).
Stage 2
This stage involves the conversion of the sulfur IV oxide formed in stage 1 into sulfur VI oxide
as shown in the equation below:
Sulfur IV oxide+ Oxygen ⇋Suphur VI Oxide
2SO2+O2⇋2SO3: ∆H=-197 kJmol-1. Being that the reaction is exothermic, a decrease in the
temperature would shift the equilibrium of the reaction to the right and thus favouring forward
reaction. The overall effect will be an increase in the yield on SO3
The reaction in this stage is a reversible reaction and the process of formation of sulfur VI oxide
is an exothermic process.
The reaction occurs in the presence of a catalyst Vanadium (V) oxide to increase the rate of the
reaction. Large quantities of sulfur dioxide is converted into sulfur trioxide and any releases of
sulfur dioxide are avoided as it would result into acid rain.
Stage 3