I been looking everywhere for this.
Car battery Specialists dont carry out this product and neither does large hardware stores.

Am i out of luck?

Yup - not hard to come by - but if you wanted to make things that go bang, then there are better things to use. What did you have in mind for it?

I'd be pretty interested to know aswell providing you don't say 'mo-flo'.

Ring around cleaning suppliers and industrial chemical suppliers.

If you can't find it then you aren't looking in the right places and possibly should not be messing with it at all. Sulfuric acid is the most widely used industrial chemical in Australia.

It still shouldn't be hard to come across somehow; you should still be able to get some out of car batteries if you can't find any other way of obtaining it. Also, you can usually find large quantities of metal sulphates from garden and hardware stores for cheap. You can electroplate the metal out of a metal sulphate solution to leave behind H2SO4 (provided it isn't too low on the electrochemical series i.e Na, K)

Yea just use a car battery if nothing else. I used h2so4 out of a HMMWV to make some AP in Iraq as a source of entertainment. I get mine now from drain cleaners. It took about 5 stores for me to find 1 that sold it.

Don't forget to fully charge the batteries before decanting the acid.

Just out of curiousity, How do you get Sulphuric Acid (H2SO4) from car batteries? I assume it would be a simple job of just removing the "cap" things and pouring it out.

Then theres the purification. How would you go about that?

Fully charge the battery, remove all six caps, pour out all the acid, then boil it in a pyrex container until white fumes begin to appear (should happen once it's boiled to less than a third of its original volume).

A rather annoying and awkward way of getting conc. sulfuric acid, but entirely OTC.

Would there be dangerous levels of lead still in the acid even though it�s charged?
Enough to be coming out of the fumes?

well your in luck i know a place that sells it no questions asked and the place is pretty easy to find while i was at the great weston shopping center at kepara in brisbane theres a shop called super cheap auto a car shop they sell bottles of the stuff in the car battery area there relly cheap to from 15-35 dollars

+++++++++++++++

The ONLY reason this post was allowed was because of the detailing of a source. Otherwise it would have been deleted with the other two posts by the same person that were deleted for being almost duplicates of this one.

Oh, and Mr. Bisket...correct your grammer ASAP or the next shit-spelled post you make will be your last. :)

I took a look in a super cheep auto in Victoria and found nothing. How big was the store you went to?

If you're using a brand new battery, does it still have to be charged? I'm assuming the answer is yes, because it might lose some of its charge during its shelf life, but I just want to make sure before I pay for a charger.

Hmm... I think I mentioned this in a watercooler thread sometime ago, but try looking for stores called "City Farmers", they sell it at about 30-something percent concetration, as "Low-Fume" pool acid.

If you cant find it your not looking hard enough. Heres a hint forget about battery acid its not a high enough % unless you want to boil the water away.
This should help, its off the side of my container.
Quickly dissolves all organic obstructions, grease, hair, sanitary napkins, rags, sludge, soap, paper, coffee grounds in all drains or sinks and grease traps. Removes lime scale and rust deposits from drains and traps. Will not halm septic tank activity. Use weekly in all drains as a preventative maintenance measure.
So in other words ring a cleaning supply, say your sister blocked the drains up with hair since shes a hairdresser and you need some acid to unblock it.

Super chaep auto has 1L 35%conc for $10ish.
Home Hardware has 1L of drain cleaner 95%ish conc
of $40!!!:eek:

Have you tried motorcycle spare parts, anyone will do, (I know that Peter Stevens has it).

Motorcycle batteries come with the acid in a seperate container, its about half a litre.

I'm pretty sure you can buy it by itself and its fairly cheap (less than $10).

Hope this helps.

The best way to get a car battery for the acid is to get second hand ones that are left with mechanics for recycling. They usually store them until they have lots and then get rid of them. Ring a few mechanics and say can you take a few batteries. Someone will say yes. They can be charged even if they're duds, they just wont hold that charge very well. May have to offer $1 each, but you are doing them a favour.

Offer to drain the batteries, instead, because used batteries are returned for the cores, which are worth about US$5, so you'd have to give them at least that much for the actual battery.

But the acid inside is worthless, adds weight, and is a burn hazard, so they'd likely be grateful for someone who'll take it off their hands. :)

I recently purchased some acids (to adjust the pH of my hydroponic tomatoes) from a local horticulture supplier. They sold by the kg, I'm not sure why, maybe it sounds like there's more of it this way? Either way, the 20L drum (30kg) of 70% nitric acid was AU$90, and the 10L (20kg) 98% sulfuric acid was $30.

I had to restrain myself from laughing as I was loading the acids into the boot and he told me I couldn't buy ammonium nitrate because 'terrorists use it to make bombs'.

It has been said before, but often the reason people say they can't find chemicals is because they lack either a) motivation, b) money, or c) transport. If you're willing to ring around, buy at least 20 or 30kg of it, and drive out to the sticks a bit to find it, both 70% nitric and 98% sulfuric are easy enough to come by.

As for AN in Australia though, it might be more about who you know. If anyone knows any decent sources post-'SSAN', for AN in Victoria, that would be very helpful.

Does anyone have any experience with purifying that certain brand of conc. H2SO4 drain cleaner? My supply of the product is very, very dark, almost opaque brown. I tried adding a a small amount, about 5% by volume, of 50% H2O2, and a a couple of days later, this sample had changed colour, to a yellowish liquid, which seems to imply to me that it's destroyed most of the crap in there, or at least changed it.

I would reckon it hasnt 'destroyed' it,
H2O2 can be used bleach so i guess it is bleaching the dyes or something.
My H2SO4 is coloured bright red. when i add ammonium ntirate to it to make a nitrating soloution the colour just dissappears, no red precipitate or anything, (lots of nitric acid vapors being given off though) so i thought the nitric acid must do something to myn.

I done a few things with H2SO4 and especially cooking it down has shown to be valuable. You can get separation (from impurities) that way quite quickly. I have even worked with automobile battery electrolyte to see what the utilitarian value of reclaiming the H2SO4 from there would be. It's 1/3 sulfuric acid. So if you get 3 liters of battery acid and cook it down you can get one liter of good quality 96% + acid.

I tried the same thing as Zeitgeist using 27% pool grade H2O2. I heated about 300 mL of the drain cleaner and slowly added small quantities of the hydrogen peroxide. It foamed up a lot and separated into a clear layer and dark layer, which would gradually revert back to the dark color of the drain cleaner. It took almost as much H2O2 as drain cleaner by volume to completely clarify the drain cleaner.

I kept heating it until I got back down to about the original volume of drain cleaner that I used and white fumes were coming off. (One thing I noticed during this process is that the hot H2SO4 seems to be much less dense than the room temp acid...and this stuff does take a long time to cool off from 200+ degrees C.)

The final product is much clearer than the original drain cleaner and is about 1.79 g/mL. Of course, that's no absolute proof of purity...there could still be lots of crap in there that's just been bleached so I don't notice it as much...but it IS pretty to look at :D

I have an idea for making seriously strong sulfuric acid from relatively benign chemicals:

Copper (I) Chloride

2CuSO4 + NaCl + SO2 + 2H2O  2CuCl + Na2SO4 + H2SO4

Gaseous SO2 is bubbled through an aqueous solution of 50g of CuSO4.5H2O and 24g of NaCl at 60-70C until CuCl ceases to precipitate. The product is suction filtered and washed with sulfurous acid, then with glacial acetic acid until the latter becomes colorless. The moist product is placed in a shallow dish until the odor of acetic acid is no longer detectable. It is stored in a tightly closed container.

This was taken from Bauer, Handbook of Preparative Inorganic Chemistry, Ed.2, Vol.II, p.1005 (In your library on this site).

Now, I really cannot think of any really useful reason to make Copper (I) chloride itself, but the ease of the conversion of SO2 to H2SO4 via the first part of this reaction makes this a special reaction for the purpose of making H2SO4...

I mean SO2 is easily made by dropping HCl(l) onto sodium metabisulfite (home-brew sterilizer), NaCl isn't hard to get and CuSO4 is everywhere (look in pool shops for one).

The removal of the sodium sulfate would take some thought - although I suspect one could use CaCl2 (water hardener - pool shops) instead of NaCl to prepare Ca(SO4)2 which is insoluble and would precipitate with the copper (I) chloride.

PS I source my H2SO4 through industrial cleaning chem. supply companies, they sell to the public - I use it when cleaning electrical connections and refilling batteries.

Why wouldn't the sulfuric acid protonate the sodium sulfate?

H2SO4 + Na2SO4 <---> 2NaHSO4 (I'd imagine that the equilibrium would be greatly shifted to the right.)

And hello aliced... I would've thought you'd be the non-violent type. :cool:

I am unsure about that myself, but I tend to put my money on Bauer... I have no 'bad' experiences, nor have I heard any, of the syntheses within the publication cited (not like bloody King's Chemistry).

Thinking about it, there seems to be a seriously limited amount of water involved in this reaction, as well as the presence of NaCl... I'd almost be willing to bet that the majority of it will be mixed in with the Copper (I) chloride - which would at least partially account for the repeated washings. If it isn't in solution, the equilibrium will lie on the side of the free acid, won't it?

That would work, but this would be an awfully expensive and inefficient way of getting sulfuric acid. If you had these materials on hand, and you needed a little acid in a pinch, knowledge is power. You waste half your sulfate in this reaction, and making calcium sulfate means you will be unable to recycle even that without expending a tremendous amount of energy.

But here decent sulfuric acid is nigh on impossible for a normal person to purchase, whereas copper sulfate and metabisulfite are both available and cheap (as is HCl). Accessing decent quanitities of clean sulfuric acid is one of the most frustrating problems associated with amateur chemistry in this country (I sincerely dislike having to follow multi-step alternatives to procedures requiring H2SO4), while the dry distillation of hydrogen sulfate salts has potential - it is not exactly feasible on a preparative scale, this has that potential - at least for me.

Its not that hard to get considering hardware stores sell sulphuric based drain cleaner and a quick phone call to a cleaning supplier will probably get you a small drum.

He lives in Australia, so there may be no drain cleaners with sulfuric acid in them there... I don't, however, see how they could do without car batteries. The lead chamber process is another option.

No one, as of yet, has explained why the reaction between sodium sulfate and sulfuric acid is not a simple acid/base equilibrium problem. Inorganic chemistry has always been very boring to me, so I am not surprised that I have not encountered the principle before... but what is it?

I buy a 20l drum for about $40 + gst or I can get a 200L tank for $150.
That is %98az, its very clear and has a slight yellow tint.
If you are desperate for a supplier for H2SO4 and are in NT, NSW or QLD pm me.

I have not had any problem obtaining H2SO4 it is one of the most used chemicals industrial.

here is the trick!
Open up the yellow pages look for "Industrial Chemical Suppliers" or "Cleaning Chemical Suppliers".
If you cant find some 98% conc then you have a serious problem.
The only thing I have had trouble with is NH4NO3 but I live I a rural area where if you are over 18 agricultural suppliers are more then happy to sell it to you.

I'm not sure if you would be interested in this but...

I live in Australia too and have been searching for H2SO4 myself with out having to buy drum loads - I'm after only a little bit for APAN experiments.

So far all I have found is the common cleaner that sells in the hardwares/department stores called CLR (Calcium, Lime, Rust).

There are a few varieties of it but their standard mix contains around 46 grams Sulfuric Acid per liter according to the back of the bottle.

This being only 4.6% concentration can then be boiled down to yield a higher concentration (Boil to one twentieth of original volume for 92% concentration). And the standard bottle being 1 liter means at 92% concentration (Once boiled down) you will get ~50mls of acid - not a great deal of acid but for APAN production for the hobbyist its suffice and it makes one more source of sulfuric acid if you are in a hurry for a little bit.

However if you are after a considerable amount, your only option is to go to a commercial/industrial chemical supplier.

k3w13r: Have you actually tried to boil it down? I will bet that it will not only take forever, but it will be full of contaminant shit too. It takes me around 3 days to boil down a gallon of 50% sulphuric, and even then it only reaches about 90% max. I have not even tried boiling down anything below 40% for the simple reason of time. If you have unlimited time, then good for you. I think it is ridicoulously impractical to even try.

Also, TCAP made with sulphuric acid is bad. Just read a bit more.

Yes Ive read lots on how crappy H2SO4 is for AP but theres no sources of HCL around here :( (Unless you go industrial) so I'm kinda of left with a rather poor APAN mix :o

HCl is one of the easiest things to find, I would be surprised if your local hardware store didn't stock any.

You can also make your own HCl from a variety of methods, one being heating salt in sulfuric acid. I have a procedure on my website as a matter of fact. There is also a good one for anhydrous HCl gas from the Hive, it's in the Rhodium archive I believe. I have several other old time methods of making hydrochloric acid, but I never bothered much with them since HCl is cheap and plentiful almost everywhere. Check out some of the old chemistry books at the "Making of America" website.

One question, why the battery have to be fully charged ?

Somewhere I read it had to be "moderate" charged.
Anyway I boiled my battery acid and get it concentrated, but I didnt matter if its charged or not.

It should be charged because when the battery discharges this takes place...

Pb + PbO2 + 2HSO4(-) + 2H(+) ---> 2PbSO4 + 2H2O + e(-) [DISCHARGED]

*** The +/- symbol in the brackets stand for an ion/cations charge***

So if your battery is flat you will have no sulfuric acid in solution!

Well not a great deal as it was used in the reaction, and this is why you charge the battery; to "reverse" the process.

Killy - A simple search on Wikipedia for "lead acid battery" would have answered this for you, or any other boolean combination on google.

Each cell contains (in the charged state) electrodes of lead metal (Pb) and lead (IV) oxide (PbO2) in an electrolyte of about 37% w/w (5.99 Molar) sulfuric acid (H2SO4). In the discharged state both electrodes turn into lead(II) sulfate (PbSO4) and the electrolyte loses its dissolved sulfuric acid and becomes primarily water.

While Wikipedia isn't the definitive source of information by any stretch of the imagination, this certainly would have answered your question.

This answer is in my closet...