Production
Hydrogen sulfide is most commonly obtained by its separation from sour gas, which is natural gas with high content of H2S. It can also be produced by reacting hydrogen gas with molten elemental sulfur at about 450 °C. Hydrocarbons can replace hydrogen in this process.
Sulfate-reducing (resp. sulfur-reducing) bacteria generate usable energy under low-oxygen conditions by using sulfates (resp. elemental sulfur) to oxidize organic compounds or hydrogen; this produces hydrogen sulfide as a waste product.
The standard lab preparation is to react ferrous sulfide (FeS) with a strong acid in a Kipp generator.
- FeS + 2 HCl → FeCl2 + H2S
A less well-known and more convenient alternative is to react aluminium sulfide with water:
- 6 H2O + Al2S3 → 3 H2S + 2 Al(OH)3
This gas is also produced by heating sulfur with solid organic compounds and by reducing sulfurated organic compounds with hydrogen.
Hydrogen sulfide is also a byproduct of some reactions and caution should be taken when production is likely as exposure can be fatal.
Hydrogen sulfide production can be costly because of the dangers involved in production.
Read more about this topic: Hydrogen Sulfide
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labor. By proletariat, the class of modern wage laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live.”
—Friedrich Engels (1820–1895)
“From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
—Charles Darwin (1809–1882)
“... if the production of any commodity necessitates the sacrifice of human life, society should do without that commodity, but it can not do without that life.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)