What Are The Agricultural Uses Of Sulfuric Acid?

Sulfuric Acid is the most important oxyacid of sulfur, with strong acidity. Anhydrous sulfuric acid is a colorless oily liquid that crystallizes at 10.36°C.

It is usually used in its various concentrations of aqueous solution, prepared by the tower method and contact method. The former obtained crude dilute sulfuric acid, the mass fraction is generally around 75%; the latter can obtain concentrated sulfuric acid with a mass fraction of 98.3%, boiling point 338 ℃, relative density 1.84.

Sulfuric Acid

Vitriol is one of the most active binary inorganic strong acids and can react with most metals. High concentration sulfuric acid has strong water absorption and can be used as a dehydrating agent, carbonized wood, paper, cotton and linen fabrics, and bio-carbohydrate-containing substances. When mixed with water, it also emits a lot of heat. It is strongly corrosive and oxidizing, so it should be used with caution. It is an important industrial raw material that can be used in the manufacture of fertilizers, medicines, explosives, pigments, detergents, batteries, etc. It is also widely used in industries such as purification of petroleum, metal smelting, and dyes. Commonly used as chemical reagents, as dehydrating agents and sulfonating agents in organic synthesis.

According to the Sulfuric Acid Manufacturer, there are two agricultural uses of sulfuric acid. One is soil improvement. In agricultural production, sulfuric acid is increasingly used to improve calcareous soil with high pH. Over the past 20 years, the production of urea-sulfuric acid fertilizers has increased significantly and has been widely used in the soil of the western states of the United States. Injecting sulfuric acid into the lakes of dairy farms to change the pH value of the lake water can solve some air and water quality problems caused by livestock breeding. Sulfuric acid is applied to agricultural soil and water. Its main function is to dissolve calcium and magnesium carbonates and bicarbonates . These calcium and magnesium salts then replace the exchangeable sodium salts, which are then removed by leaching with water. When carbonate and bicarbonate are decomposed, sulfuric acid reacts with more inert substances, releasing plant nutrients such as phosphorus and iron. Simply lowering the pH of the soil can cause changes in the solubility of many elements and increase their effectiveness against plants. Applying sulfuric acid to the calcareous soil with high pH value can make the plants more robust and increase the harvest.

The second is the production of chemical fertilizers. The production of fertilizers such as ammonium sulfate (commonly known as ammonium sulfate or fertilizer powder) and superphosphate (commonly known as superphosphate or ordinary calcium) consume large amounts of sulfuric acid.

Used in the production of pesticides. Many pesticides use sulfuric acid as raw materials such as copper sulfate and zinc sulfate to act as fungicides for plants, thallium sulfate as a rodenticide, and ferrous sulfate and copper sulfate as herbicides. The production of the most common pesticides, such as 1059 emulsion (45%) and 1605 emulsion (45%), requires sulfuric acid.