Extracting Pure 98% Sulfuric Acid from Car Battery
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In this video I tear down an average car battery and extract the electrolyte from it to later process it into the incredibly useful concentrated sulfuric acid while advancing my sand-stealing skills.
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Sulfuric acid concentration chart - www.handymath.com/cgi-bin/sul...
0:00 Intro
3:23 Extracting Car Battery Electrolyte
6:06 Concentrating And Puryfing The Electrolyte
11:05 Experiments With Sulfuric Acid
11:49 Outro
#chemistry
#experiment
#beautiful
#demonstration
#science
#interesting
#useful
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The EU HATES this one trick!
The EU is an authoritarian hellscape tbh
great informative video. in my country we can buy 12% sulfuric acid meant to refill car batteries, its way easier because you dont need to worry about any impurities... I made concentrated sulfuric acid from it in the past, I will make a video when I get some free time
here 35% is still available (and 92% drain cleaner grade can be found online too), although thanks to EU regulations that might change in the future
Same, most of the tutorials always talk about drain cleaners that are sulfuric acid based which straight up don't exist where I live. Battery acid though is universal.
The grade of industrialisation of a country is expressed in the amount of sulfuric acid (in kilotons) it consumes in a year.
@Amateur Chemistry You can also get sulfuric acid by electrolysing an aqueous copper(II) sulfate with a copper cathode and an inert anode like lead dioxide, carbon, platinum, etc... And also don´t use any metal or alloy that reacts with sulfuric acid to collect it like that steel pot! Use something made of glass, for example, instead.
I actually plan on making a video on this method :)
I did that recently and now have a really cool looking copper plating jar - I put a couple of vertical strips of copper tape up the inside sides and a loop running around the middle to connect them. Now the cathode from the acid run is a chunky anode for plating.
Medieval alchymists made it by thermal decomposition of sulfates, if I remember correctly
Now you dad ask: Were my new lead battery?
"It went to science."
No it explode
also wheres my food scale ?
I distilled it pops
While more time consuming, it would in theory be cheaper to distill pool pH lowering liquid. It's 14,9% and can be bought for around 40€ per 20kg canister. Starting with the 37% battery acid is easier, but you pay more money for less concentrated acid since batteries aren't especially cheap.
You can sometimes find people selling their old 50% stuff. Often it is cheaper than buying the lower concentrated acid new
And the batteries need to be in working order. Otherwise they consumed the acid inside. So... buying a battery for the little acid inside is just dumb.
its chlorine not sulfuric acid
@@wreck_grimes6754 I have only seen a mixture of hydrochloric and sulfuric acid as a pH decreaser but never only HCl
@@wreck_grimes6754 It's sulfuric. Just need to buy the right product. It says 14,9% sulfuric acid on most canisters.
A pyncnometer (a little flask with a capillary sticking out) is like $10 on Amazon and is a crazy precise way of measuring sulfuric acid density! Much better than grad cylinders.
If you get one for ten dollars it will probably be a cheaply manufactured one with less accuracy. If you really need that precise density measurements I would recommend investing more and going for a name brand one.
@@y33t23good glassware is surprisingly cheap now, there’s really no good reason why it should be less accurate.
Just boil the acid until white fumes come off. Then you are at almost 100%. Measuring with any of those methods does not give you any more information.
@@jackmclane1826Doesn't the azeotrope prevent it from reaching 100% from boiling?
Be careful not to damage the cell dividers when opening the battery. Save them, they are great for use as low-resistance diaphragm in electrolysis experiments that require a divided cell.
I remember the army manual where this procedure was described. with the help of two glass bottles ,some tape and fireplace. white vapors should appear at the right temperature, different shades of black at the wrong temperature. 😂the description warned that it should be done by a person who is patient.
Great video as always ❤
That’s a great manual, but I’m not sure I’d want to try that specific process. Distilling H2SO4 is scary enough with proper glassware.
Not sure about you guys over in the EU, but in the US you can get usually get battery electrolyte from auto repair stores for way cheaper than buying a battery, Mine was 25$ for 5gal (19L, 24Kg). It's super pure so you don't have to deal with lead. The only down side is it's only 30-32%. Pretty good stuff if you need something more pure than the drain cleaner.
It is illegal to own or store over 15% here in Europe.
cant even get dry ice here smh I bet you can even buy dead people at the grocery store down there in the usay
Thank you for the guide!!! 👍👍👍
Great video!! I’m surprised how much acid was actually inside, I’ve topped distilled water up in batteries in the past so knew there was a bit inside, but not so much! 👌 great info! And knowing these is so much almost makes a 100$ battery somewhat worthwhile for the acid if u really needed it and couldn’t find something more suitable! 👊🍻😊
yay another video
Exactly what I need you are the best
10:10 high concentration and hot ZnCl2 in water and / or HCl (around 60% zinc by weight iirc) also "dissolves" cellulose (all I can obtain is a VERY dark thing but I'm sure something useful can probably be made of it) I'm experimenting with it these days it's a fun chemical
EDIT: I've just performed the experiment again: with fewer heat ZnCl2 (aq.) really dissolves cellulose at around 80C. I have no idea what this can be used for though obviously.
ZnCl2 has an insane boiling point even in solution (like 300C at 50%), so it carbonises cellulose insanely well when hot - my gut feeling is that this very fine carbon mesh (mess?) is probably useful to something.
Tetraamminecopper(II) hydroxide is prettier and it works in room temperature.
@@user255awesome with ammonium nitrate or perchlorate too
@@user255 oh interesting thx, adding this to my list of synths to try
Lol, i can go down to the local mom and pop hardware store and buy a gallon of crystal clear 98% sulfuric acid for like $12. I use it at work for commercial/industrial drain cleaning, and storing it in a dark closet in it's gallon jug it stays clear for over a year, though it almost never lasts that long except during Covid.
I think this process is more for the EU folks who can’t buy decently concentrated H2SO4. Here in the US and Canada where I’m from we’re kinda spoiled with how easily 98% H2SO4 is.
Its kinda dumb restriction since people who want to make explosives can probably get it anyways.@@chemistryofquestionablequa6252
Good job!
Thanks!
Cool! Excited to see the lead recovery
Could you salvage the PbO2 electrode for a chlorate cell ? That would be a OTC source for a good electrode.
The EU laws prohibiting access to chemicals are ridiculous and put hobbyist chemists under general suspicion.
I'd go as far as to argue that they violate the EU human rights charta, since the negative implications of these measures are way out of proportion to their capability of "reducing crime and terrorism".
Many folks born between the 60s and mid-80s got into chemistry and science by experimenting in their sheds - this is now ciminalized and creates a massive lost opportunity in getting future generations engaged into the matter :(
Brussels would even prohibit baking soda and vinegar if it could.
Well, if you chug down cup full of vinegar and baking soda, the resulting fart could endanger the public. I bet you didn't take that possibility into account.
I got pressed charges against me fir exactly that. Had to give up my amateur chemistry hobby and my 10k euro lab. Plus I am in danger of facing jailtime. Greetings from the eco-Socialist country Germany 😢
Instead of stopping the invasion of criminals and terrorists from third world S-holes that should never be allowed to enter Europe the communist fascists from the EU prefer to ban everything for the law abiding European natives
@@call.me.heisenberg6990how did they find you?
I completely agree, luckily in Italy there isnt much control.
Neat. Some lead contamination? Didn't the distillation remove that?
what thermometer do you use in video?
Super film
You could just doul down the acid in some pots and when it is about 70-80% take iron pipes (water or hydraulic pipes screwed together) full them with the acid and destill it in a wood fire.
You can additionally remove metal ions by electrilysis. (Graphite electrodes)
Charming !!!
Hi is it possible to make h2so4 using fe2(so4)3+ h2 = 2feso4 +h2so4? I cant find the temperature requirements for the reaction. Btw great video
I dont that would be a safe or even viable procedure due to the explosive nature of hydrogen. Much better is to just electrolyse CuSo4. A copper negative electrode, graphite positive and you get H2SO4 in solution, copper metal at the negative electrode and oxygen on the positive. Though take my advice with a grain of salt, i have done this reaction only once and have not measured the resulting purity. It did crystalize a lot of copper on the negative electrode though so i do believe the reaction went through.
Não imaginava que tinha tanto ácido em uma bateria!
Great !!!
The best source for EU people is PH minus (14,9% sulfuric, 85,1% H2O).
You can not legally concentrate it though.
all PH- available in my country is either NaHSO4 or organic acids
@@SuperAngelofglory
You can let it ship to you from other EU countries.
If you precipitate the lead with ammonia and then filter it, you can make the sulfuric acid more pure.
Can u explain anti iron chemmical and procesaking
Can you make 2,5-dimethoxybenzaldehyde?
I think that "i myself have used it" is a understatement for our Polish friend, i think that "i presonally have abused it" suites you much better
Can trace amounts of lead compounds sneak over? I would be wary of both oil and water soluble lead compounds.
The lead contamination in the electrolyte is completely non-volatile, it's mostly lead sulfate
Lead (II) sulfate has a melting point of 1087°C and it decomposes at higher temperatures without ever boiling, elemental lead boils at 1749°C. So no, any sensible contamination in the receiving flask at 337°C is highly unlikely and unsignificant, even though you should probably check vapor pressure data for extra safety.
Great Video! just one thing, i don't understand whats is the sand up to, can u explain to me please?
Thanks! The purified sand by having a ton of very rough surface area allows the sulfuric acid to boil as many small bubbles instead of big bursts which makes this thing a whole lot safer.
Yes, in my experience glass pieces do not work well, even when the surface is sanded rough. Pieces of ceramics work very well, but not necessarily with H2SO4. @@Amateur.Chemistry
@@user255 according to Cody's lab, they do
6:16 That gasp tho
Does anybody know what he says to use to not make the flask burst from difference in temperature at 8:56 ? Pls reply
He is using an air pump as that is enough cooling at that temperature.
Will we ever see the defeat of egg?
The egg haunts me.
6:17 Amateur Chemistry: gasp
I got a ton years ago from an old photo lab. About 20%? Mine also turned yellowish after boiling it down. It also eats through some kinds of plastic.. be wary.
The intro background music is dankpod's ears on stand test music.
So i all this smelly sulfurous rock can i turn it into acid somehow?
I don’t even do chemistry, but this is good knowledge to save for nuclear armageddon
Should over voltage the battery first, worst that can happen is you electrolyse some of the water off
Bro are you from Poland?
If you remove the lead plates and melt them, pretty please make a video of it? I love melted metal!🤤 Even if you don't melt them, I'll watch that too! Lol
I will definitely do that, I have some interesting things planned for the lead, but I will start somewhere near summer because I have to go to my second lab where my furnaces are. Also expect some videos with different molten metals in the future :)
Why doesn't the "sand from the middle of nowhere Poland" introduce a whole bunch of contamination? Seems like using this would undo all the prior purification..
I washed it with a ton of water and hydrochloric acid which removed all the reactive contaminants
I don't know about where you are from, but I think our hardware stores in the US sell concentrated sulfuric acid
In the EU sulfuric acid is limited to
Poland.
Yeah, i buy crystal clear 98% by the gallon super cheap at my local small town rural mom and pop hardware store. Even after a year or more of storage it stays crystal clear. Some drain cleaners with surfactants and additives go all brown with byproduct.
EU has stupid laws
Please don't use Teflon stir bars for this!
You were heating the PTFE almost 100°C above its maximum safe temperature for quite a long time, which contaminated your distillate with various fluorine breakdown products.
Teflon depolymerizes above 650°C and melts at 327°C , so there probably wasn't too much decomposition happening, and even it it did its amount is negligible
@@Amateur.ChemistryIt melts at 327°C, but it starts decomposing at 200°C, so there definitely was some decomposition.
Is there another way to get rid of lead contamination?
not really. I doubt chelation would work in a H2SO4 solution. It is annoying, because there are some situations when the led contamination would be an issue (like making hydrazine and hydroxilamine).
@@SuperAngelofglory thanks for the info
Distilled acid is lead free, but its quite dangerous. Another method is electrolytic reduction.
It's got led in the acid I did not think it could be separated 😅
I remember buying 750ml of >94% to 98% H2SO4 drain cleaner at Leroy Merlin for 1.37€, back when I started experimenting things in late 2017.
I had great times with my mates back then, and those motherfuckers of the EU ruined everything a couple years later.
Thank you for the video :)
Please return the poor car batteries corpse back to the ocean. :( let him join he car battery friends in the lovely ocean.
Seems Poland doesn't care to much about the EU regulations...🙈🙉🙊
Not really
Nor should they.
neither does Romania, we still have 35% electrolite available to buy (and some stores still sell drain cleaner with H2SO4 too). Thank God for bureaucracy. Oh, and I just bought a bottle of 32% HCl for metal pickling.
@@SuperAngelofglory
Conc. HCl is still legal in the EU.
@@experimental_chemistry I will never understand the logic. HCl over 30% is about as bad as any concentrated acid.
You can buy the acid in a car battery in a bottle. It's sold this way to restore old batteries.
In Europe you can't buy solfuric acid without a special permit, even if your pourpouse Is to restore a battery.
@@Alberto_TravaginThat's an aweful roundabout way of dealing with the immigration problem. 🤷♂️
@@Alberto_Travagin False. You can buy sulfuric acid, but only diluted solutions. Also I have bought car acid (sulfuric acid) in a bottle before.
@Alberto_Travagin Yesterday I bought drain cleaner and was shocked at how reactive it was. Looked at the ingredients: 98% sulfuric acid. Maybe it's illegal but you definitely find some. (France)
The sulfuric acid drain cleaner he uses in many of his videos is 98%, but after checking it says it actually isn't 98%... Maybe it's like 10% 98% acid??? But idk how that would make any sense. I've even seen the EU paper that bans it@@remiheneault8208
what is the concentration of sulfuric acid in the sewer cleaner?
Depends on brand
@@Krzysix.io11
The one in the video 1:10
Usually 80-95% and it contains additional corrosion inhibitors and detergents. You gotta add a tiny amount of H2O2 and then heat it until it gives off white fumes and becomes clear.
@@Psychx_ thank you very much
My local mom and pop rural hardware store sells 98% for super cheap, it's crystal clear and stays clear after over a year of storage. Most brands have surfactants and stuff, but this is just a gallon of 98% acid in a plain white generic bottle.
Can these same methods also be used to increase the concentration of muriatic acid?
No, HCl is a gas which escapes by heating as soon as the acid reaches the azeotrop at 20 %.
Not exactly. With muriatic acid it’s a different story because hydrogen chloride (the stuff that makes it an acid) is a gas. I plan to show how to concentrate it in a future video
@@Amateur.Chemistry
It's quite simple: generating the gas from heating sodium bisulfate with table salt and inserting it into a 24 % hydrochloric acid from the hardwarestore by using an inverted funnel trap until its density doesn't increase anymore at about 37 % and 1.19 g/ml.
Yes but most hardware stores sell 31% HCl. Cheaply
@@chanheosican6636Not here, 23% at most in the hardware store. It's clear and leaves no residu on distillation, so I assume they just bottled the azeotrope. In the past I've seen brands that sold yellowish colored muriatic acid, suspect it is because of dissolved iron ions.
I feel sorry for chemists in breadline nations. The nearest hardware store to me sells concentrated sulfuric acid. I literally bought a gallon of it earlier today, and it cost about the same as the pack of romex staples that I bought with it.
Earphone testing background music
For I am but only birb, I must ask, is it seeb, and can I eat it?
In Germany you can buy it in the pharmacy for about 5€/100ml at a concentration of 96%-98%. So at least not hard to get in Germany.
I don't think so. The possession is illegal for private individuals. That was maybe possible 4 years ago
Germany no longer allows private individuals buy H2SO4 higher than 12%, as far as I know
@@SuperAngelofglory it should be
4:10 hmm, my car battery show 14.5V when fully charged, but apparently 12.6V is acceptable, didn't know there was such a high variability
My battery could probably charged a little more, but as long as its voltage is around the 12V mark it should work well for this extraction :)
~13.8v is considered a normal voltage for a fully charged 12v lead acid battery but it does vary a little. Less than 13v is not usually considered fully charged though.
@@daoji6373 yeah that was what I had in mind
All the batteries are voltage rated at certain current. If you measure a car battery with a voltmeter without any electrical load it can show much more than 12 V and if the load is higher than the standard one the battery delivers less than 12 V. You can even check new '1.5 V' batteries, if you don't draw any current they have 1.6 V or more.
@@zenongranatnik8370 yes but here, if I remember correctly, it was the unloaded voltage that was just slightly over 12V
Are you polish?
Yeah hot sulfiric acid is a nasty stuff. During my apprenticeship (at Bayer) i also worked at the part of the company were they made Oleum. I can only say that very hot Oleum is even more nasty stuff. Fumes like hell when coming in contact with air (when we for example hat to change a pump. . .) And all my work trousers had holes after a few weeks (because everywhere was the stuff that is used to make the sulfiric acid (and after the process there is something left over that is called "abbrand" in german). If this stuff comes in contact with water you get low concentrated H₂SO₃ which loves to eat holes in your trousers 🤣. I only hated one more thing there. The lovely smell that was arround you all the time🤮
Sulfuric acid, including diluted battery acid, is banned in the EU. Only workshops are allowed to have battery acid here. For example, if someone has a bottle of battery acid from the old days in the garage and gets caught with it, it's their turn...
I just imagine they have brainstorming sessions where they all yell out the most absurd bans they can think of
Then again, it's difficult to buy benzaldehyde, acetic anhydride, and other common reagents in the U.S. due an ongoing war with inanimate objects
@@charlesnathansmith
It's just how it is in the Babylonian Tower and especially in DEUTSCHland.
@@charlesnathansmithThat seems very possible. It was already suggested to ban bleach and organic compounds containing fluorine
No, battery acid is *not* illegal. Up to 15% it's all legal, then you need permission.
south American viewership 📈📈📈
If you get a drop of hot sulfuric acid on your skin not much happens even at high concentration because typically you'll go and rinse it off right away.
Not much different than a regular burn after that.
Depends how hot. Boiling sulfuric acid will definitely put a hole in your hand almost instantly.
just distill drain cleaner if ur gonna distill it
Not in EU.
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‘Pure” ≠ “98%” just saying.
98% pure. Purely 98%.
And btw if you watched the video he mentioned why getting + 98% is essentially impossible
@@triple_gem_shining And 2% contamination therefore the entire amount of the liquid in question is impure. Semantics are a bummer sometimes.
@@triple_gem_shining “And btw…” not my point. I’m not questioning his work or the validity of what you’ve stated. He could have said something like “the purest attainable” and been more accurate with his title on the video. So I’m bored, what else is new. 😂
I wrote it like that in the title so it is easy to quickly read, and I know that it can be a bit misguiding but what I wanted to convey is that I made sulfuric acid without any contaminants with the concnetration of 98% in water which I don't count as a contaminant
Is this worth trying on a dead battery that doesn't hold charge? Because i have one that i was going to open up for some free lead
It depends... The acid is used up when the battery is discharged. So in any way, charge it before disassembly to recover as much acid as possible.
@@goranaxelsson1409 Thanks for the help although charging it might be tricky when i haven't charged it for a few years now 😂
Surprisingly in California you can just buy drain cleaner
Anhydrous battery juice have me like:
😭🥵🥹😫😫🤩😫😩😅🫠
The only conclusion is rather simple. To extract the diluted sulfuric acid by evaporating the water content by boiling at 100C and get 98% sulfuric acid. The video was very long for this content
does not work like that, you need way over 100 Celsius, due to the high stregth of the bond between H2SO4 and H2O molecules. Even at 300 Celsius, the acid is not 98%, only when it reaches the boiling point of the azeotrope will it be 98% (actually, 98.3%).
You bought this battery for fuckin 200zł and then destroyed it lol
You could just buy car battery electrolyte here in Poland (i bought 5l for 60zł)
Also I distilled h2so4 when I was 14 so it's not a big deal
I know that, but I did that just to show people that it can be done. Also distilling sulfuric acid is a big deal, its incredibly dangerous and can seriously hurt you if you are not careful
It definitely is a big deal, you were probably just a dumb and careless kid...
I’m watching this video so I can try this at home…