No, you didn't misread the topic, nor did I get it wrong. While most people have trouble obtaining nitric acid my problem is quite the opposite, which is why I'm looking for a way to make sulfuric acid from nitric acid. The nitric acid I have is 53% (w/w) technical grade.

I've thought about it for a while, but I see no solution to the problem. Am I wasting my time here?

You'd have to switch out the nitrogen from HNO3 with sulphur. Oh, and add another hydrogen and oxygen. :rolleyes:

It's been discussed before, and so, no, you can't turn nitric into sulphuric.

What you can do is pass a stream of sulphur dioxide gas into a solution of hydrogen peroxide as it has an electric current passed through it. This forms a weak solution of sulphuric acid.

Once you have a solution of sulphuric acid, you simply boil off the water to get a concentrated solution. :)

Or just drain old car batteries and boil it down until white fumes come off it. I'm assuming your country has cars? :p

Or just drain old car batteries and boil it down until white fumes come off it. I'm assuming your country has cars? :pOf course, but also too effective waste management. You rarely see used car batteries lying around. Besides those batteries are damn heavy and a pain to collect when you don't have a car yourself. It's like they're full of lead! :rolleyes:

So far I've been using battery acid as my source of sulfuric acid though.

I guess I'll just keep collecting car batteries and use the nitric acid for making lead nitrate from the electrodes instead. Now there's a useful salt. :)

Just a quick note, remember to recharge the batteries first before you empty them.

Also, there are multiple threads around about burning sulfur, passing it through water (maybe H2O2) to eventually form H2SO4

I've thought about it for a while, but I see no solution to the problem. Am I wasting my time here?

On google, type Sulfuric Acid, Lead Chambers and read all material that come up. Regards.

Had I been living in a more remote location I probably would have set up a small scale production using the contact process, or at least tried. It would be a nice way to put my chemical engineering education to the test. It is my understanding that this process is quite hard to implement on a small scale. Has anyone here managed to get a working setup?

However, I live in a city and without a fumehood burning sulfur is out of the question. It makes your clothes stink for days.

Oh, how I wish our drain cleaners were sulfuric acid and not sodium hydroxide...

('Our' being sweden. NBK)