Sulfuric acid is called the “king of chemicals” because it is the most widely used chemical on earth. Over 260 million metric tons were produced in 2021 #GreenEnergy 🧵
Sulfuric acid is essential for electric vehicles, batteries, solar, wind turbines, semiconductors and other green technology, because sulfuric acid is how you get lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper, and some rare earth metals by dissolving the rock around them.
But over half is used for the most important product of all, dissolving phosphate out of rocks to make phosphate fertilizer, which can increase crop production by 50%, to grow our fuel: food.
Today 80% comes from oil and natural gas refining into pure elemental sulfur, safe and easy to transport.
The remaining 20% is mainly gotten by the Frasch process which requires dumping lots of super heated water into boreholes drilled into sulfur bearing rocks, water boiled by fossils today, vast amounts of wood in the future.
This method releases not just sulfuric acid but toxic metals like arsenic, mercury, lead, cadmium, and chromium that can leach out for millennia, poisoning rivers and groundwater.
So without oil and gas we cant make enough sulfur to power this new green world they envision. Without oil and gas we must poison the lakes and rivers to make it. Without it we cant feed the world. But lets get rid of oil and gas?
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