Why Concentrated Sulfuric Acid Should Not Be Used to Dry Ammonia in Products? The Harmful Substances

There are many chemicals that we use on a daily basis. Those chemicals are the ingredients in the making process of our necessary products. For example, we shower twice a day.

While showering, we are using hygienic beauty products such as soap and toothpaste. These products contain for most common ingredients.

Top Four Useful Ingredients In Soap

• Sodium hydroxide. We all know that fats and oils cannot be mixed with water. This ingredient is the one that makes cleaning grease so much easier.
• Oil and fat. These ingredients are also added in the process of soap making. Different oil and fat offer different kinds of benefits. The soap contains cocoa butter is great at moisturizing your skin. If you like the kind of soap that form a lot of bubbles, you can buy the one that contains coconut oil. For you who has sensitive skin, don’t worry! Buy a soap which contains olive oil. This soap is safe for sensitive skin. Those three kinds of oils and fats are very common to find in soaps. Just choose the one suitable for your need.
• Scents. When we see the soap advertisement on television, we often hear that soaps have pleasing scents.
  These scents are not only useful to make our body smell good, but also give health benefits. For example, soap with the lavender aroma is believed to help our body to relax and reduce stress. The one with rosemary aroma can lower the tiredness we feel. There are also some aromas that can give good treatments for disease-caused microorganism. They are the lemon aroma, which is good for skin detoxifying skin and the orange aroma, which is good in destroying bacteria.
• Glycerin. This ingredient is also a common thing to be used in both soap and toothpaste. We can also find it in other products such as cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. Glycerin is beneficial to make the products great for dry and sensitive skin, great at skin moisturizing, and will not cause any allergic reaction

Related:

• Chemicals in perfume
• Scents dangerous for health
• Unhealthy chemicals in toothpaste
• The making of liquid soap

From the descriptions above we know that the ingredients or chemicals in the soap can mix very well with water and give benefits. But not all chemicals have this characteristic when mixing with another chemical.

Why Concentrated Sulfuric Acid Should Not Be Used To Dry Ammonia?

Sulfuric acid is a very important industrial chemical. It has many uses. The major one is as an ingredient in making fertilizers.

It is also useful in petroleum refining and metals processing. 

At the boiling point of sulfuric acid, this chemical loses the sulfur trioxide. The concentration will reach 98.3% acid and be known as concentrated sulfuric acid.

Concentrated sulfuric acid is useful for removing water from many compounds, for example, carbohydrates. When it treats sugar sucrose, the concentrated sulfuric acid removes eleven molecules of H₂0.

As a result, there is a fragile sponge-like black mass of carbon. It also affects the concentrated sulfuric acid and makes it diluted. The skin, cellulose, some plants, and animals will make this particular chemical gives a similar reaction.

Related:

• Ammonia in fertilizer
• Dangerous chemical for pets
• Base and acid in daily life

The characteristic of concentrated sulfuric acid shows great similarity with water. Ammonia is an alkaline gas which means when it dissolves in water, this compound forms an alkali or basic solution with pH greater than 7.

From the name, we know that concentrated sulfuric acid has pH smaller than 7. This is the opposite of ammonia which is categorized as the base. When the two chemicals meet, it will neutralize each other.

Because of this, the concentrated sulfuric acid cannot dry ammonia. Instead of drying ammonia, ammonia reacts chemically when treated with concentrated sulfuric acid and forms ammonium sulfate. Because ammonia is a weak base, the ammonium sulfate formed acts as a weak acid.

This explanation above shows that we cannot use concentrated sulfuric acid to dry ammonia.