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Registered Member #8
Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 04:34AM
Location: Harlowton, MT, United States
Posts: 214
I have been working on an enclosed Jacob's for production of NO2 and nitric acid from air. The idea is to run it continuously and produce some amount of dilute acid over days or weeks of operation, then distill it afterward, and repeat. It has oiled cooled copper rails (each consisting of a tube within a larger tube and coaxial flow) and a water cooled glass jacket. Air is fed through the glass vessel with an aquarium air pump and then bubbled through water to make the acid. The ladder runs on a 7200V 30mA NST and has a central Gabriel electrode.
I am having some leakage problems with the oil pump (a hydraulic gear pump which I have coupled to a 19rpm high torque gear motor); the shaft seal is leaking. The motor also struggles to push the oil through the narrow circuit, and will stall unless the electrodes are warmed up prior to turning it on. A fully integrated, preferably submersible, pump would be preferable but I don't have one right now.
The NO2 production rate is quite significant; within a minute of running the red color can clearly be seen inside the envelope, and the distinctive smell can be noticed quite strongly at the outlet tube.
Registered Member #543
Joined: Tue Feb 20 2007, 04:26PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4992
From the evidence of your photographs, your biggest NO2 leagake problem is the absence of a fume cupboard, which makes it less easy to accord these experiments the merit they might otherwise have deserved.
Registered Member #8
Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 04:34AM
Location: Harlowton, MT, United States
Posts: 214
You may have misunderstood. There is no NO2 leakage except for the fact that I need a better absorber; it is fully sealed. The problem is oil leakage. To Bored Chemist: I started out with 50 weight oil; it did not turn, but it did not leak readily either. I then moved to 20 weight, and it turns when warm, but leaks quickly. I may just use air cooling to cool the rails instead, if it turns out to be sufficient. The weak link right now is the solder joint from the Gabriel electrode to the rail, but there are probably alternatives to that although I will never be able to braze it now that the rail has had oil inside it.
To aonomus: It should be possible to use this setup to oxidize SO2 to SO3, however in my opinion there are much more straightforward ways of generating SO3 (especially since the SO2 would have to come from somewhere), such as the electrolysis of fused salt solutions containing sulfates. SO2 can also be oxidized to SO3 in the presence of vanadium pentoxide catalyst under moderate pressure (150psi) and temperature (400-500°C) which is physically a much simpler setup than this Jacob's ladder.
For NO2 production (or ozone production if I ran it on pure oxygen), I do enjoy the allure of having a continuously running Jacob's ladder. It is like a piece of high voltage art which also serves a chemical purpose; I would almost build something like this just for looks and I know most people here probably would. It is far more classy than an Ostwald reactor or something.
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Nitrogen Dioxide/Nitric Acid Producing Jacob's Ladder
