Fuming sulfuric acid

From Citizendium
Revision as of 13:38, 16 January 2008 by imported>David E. Volk (picture etc)
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This article is a stub and thus not approved.
Main Article
Discussion
Related Articles  [?]
Bibliography  [?]
External Links  [?]
Citable Version  [?]
 
This editable Main Article is under development and subject to a disclaimer.

Fuming sulfuric acid, also called oleum, is produced by adding sulfur trioxide, SO3, to sulfuric acid. It mostly contains disulfuric acid (also called pyrosulfuric acid).

SO3 + H2SO4 → H2S2O7
(CC) Image: David E. Volk
Pyrosulfuric acid is produced from sulfur trioxide and sulfuric acid.

This reaction proceeds due to the relative instability of the three (S=O) double bonds present in sulfur trioxide, relative to the presence of two double bonds and two single bonds in the acidic forms.

Additional sulfur trioxide molecules can be added to create trisulfuric acid (H2S3O10), tetrasulfuric acid (H2S4O13) and so on up to very long sulfur trioxide polymers, H(SO3)nH.