• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.255-265
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• 2021

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to analyze the exposure characteristics of inorganic acids. Methods: We analyzed exposure data (n = 363,146) for six inorganic acids (hydrogen fluoride, hydrogen bromide, hydrogen chloride, phosphoric acid, nitric acid, and sulfuric acid) collected between 2017 and 2019 in South Korea. Measurement characteristics and exposure levels (ELs) were analyzed by inorganic acid, industry category, enterprise size, and measurement year. Results: Measurement percentage dominated in time-weighted average (TWA, 91%) compared to short term exposure limit (STEL) and Ceiling. Most of the measurements (79.7%) were collected from the manufacturing category of industry. Medians of ELs were mostly low (≤3% of the threshold limit), with the exception of sulfuric acid (4.6% of TWA and 10.5% of STEL). The percentages of exceeding 1% of the occupational exposure limits (OELs) in TWA were relatively high for sulfuric acid (35.8%) and hydrogen chloride (16.5%) compared to the other acids (4.2%-6.6%). In addition, the percentages of exceeding 1% of OELs in STEL or Ceiling were higher for sulfuric acid (22.9%), hydrogen chloride (12.3%), and nitric acid (8.2%) compared to the other acids (1.2%-1.9%). The small-sized enterprises showed higher ELs in TWA; contrarily, the large-sized enterprises had higher ELs in STEL or Ceiling. Conclusions: The measurement characteristics and ELs identified in this study could be useful for establishing safety and health policies for inorganic acids.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.243-249
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• 2004

The toxicity of inorganic sulfuric acid as a stressor was characterized in Saccharomyces cerevisiae KNU5377. In this work, we examined physiological responses to low extracellular pH $(pH_{ex})$ caused by inorganic $H_2SO_4$, which could not affect cell growth after pH was adjusted to an optimum with Trizma base. The major toxicity of sulfuric and was found to be reduction of environmental pH, resulting in stimulation of plasma membrane ${H^+}-ATPase$, which in turn contributed to intracellular alkalinization. Using a pH-dependent fluorescence probe, 5-(and-6)-carboxy SNARF-1, acetoxymethyl ester, acetate (carboxy SNARF-1 AM acetate), to determine $pH_{in}$, we found that color was dependent on the changes of intracellular pH which coincided with calculated $pH_{in}$ of alkalinization up to approximately pH 7.3. This alkalinization did not seem to affect survival of these cells exposed to 30 mM sulfuric acid, which lowered the $pH_{ex}$ of the glucose containing growth media up to approximately pH 3.0; however, the cells could grow only up to 70% of the maximum growth in the same media, when 30 mM sulfuric acid was added.

• Asian Journal of Atmospheric Environment
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.55-61
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• 2010

The sensitivity of aerosol light extinction coefficient to the aerosol chemical composition change is estimated by (1) calculating the aerosol water content and chemical concentrations by a gas/particle equilibrium model and (2) calculating the aerosol light extinction coefficient by a Mie theory based optical model. The major chemical species are total (gas and particle phase) sulfuric acid, total nitric acid, and total ammonia which are based on the measurement data at Seoul and Gosan. At Seoul, since there were enough ammonia to neutralize both total sulfuric acid and total nitric acid, the dry ionic concentration is most sensitive to the variation of the total nitric acid level, while the total mass concentration (ionic concentration plus water content) and thus, the aerosol light extinction coefficient are primarily determined by the total sulfuric acid. At Gosan, since the concentration of ambient sulfuric acid was the highest among the inorganic species, sulfate salts determined aerosol hygroscopicity. Thus, both ionic and total mass concentration, and resultant aerosol light extinction coefficient are primarily determined by the sulfuric acid level.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.110-117
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• 2003

A thermotolerant yeast strain, Saccharomyces cerevisiae KNU5377 (abbreviated as KNU5377, was exposed to inorganic acids including sulfuric, nitric and hydrochloric acid. As a stressor, each inorganic acid is very easily dissociated in water, resulting in lowering environmental pH. When compared with a reference S. cerevisiae ATCC24858, KNU5377 could overcome such a severe condition containing a final 0.4% concentration of sulfuric acid or nitric acid to grow at the overnight culture, but this reference could not. Additionally, this strain showed a surprisingly strong tolerance by surviving despite of exposure to the regime of 0.35% of hydrochloric acid for over 90 min and also to 0.6% of sulfuric acid for 30 min. On the contrary, both strains could not survive against a final 0.45% concentration of nitric acid. This strain KNU5377 could produce ethanol of 3% in 2 days by using the fermentation medium containing a final 0.3% concentration of sulfuric arid. Moreover, change into a final 0.2% concentration of sulfuric acid caused this strain to enhance fermentation productivity up to about 4.5% even at $40^{\circ}C$. In exposure to a final 0.2% of sulfuric acid for 60 min, trehalose was most accumulated within 30 min in KNU5377, and this suggested a cellular defense system led by this disaccharide was profitable for this strain to lead to no morphological changes.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.40 no.2 s.183
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• pp.141-151
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• 2007

This study was focused on iron removal from illite by L-ascorbic and oxalic acids. Iron has been shown as a secondary mineral such as iron oxides and hydroxides in illite ores. It is also known as a primary agent to degrade brightness index of the ores. Methods such as physical separation and chemical leaching with strong inorganic acids have been widely used to remove the iron from the ores. However, these methods are expensive and give rise to environmental problems. In this study, we examined an alternative method using solutions with different set of combination of sulfuric, hydrochloric, L-ascorbic, and oxalic acids. Compared to chemical treatments with only inorganic acids, our results demonstrate that an addition of L-ascorbic acid in inorganic acids results in decreasing both total concentrations of the inorganic acids and time for the treatments. The treatment with 0.15 M L-ascorbic acid and 0.25 M sulfuric acid in solution for 60 min significantly improved the brightness index from 42.4% to 74.4%. This improvement is similar to that of treatment with only 2.5 M sulfuric acid alone for 150 min. Mineralogical and chemical analyses were performed to compare the effect of acid leaching on illite powders. No obvious differences are observed in the mineralogical characteristics and particle size distributions of the samples. These results suggest that the treatment with the addition of L-ascorbic acid in sulfuric acid could effectively remove iron without modifying the physicochemical properties of illite under conditions used in this study.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.30-36
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• 2017

Leaching experiments of anode slime were performed with several inorganic acids (HCl, $HNO_3$ and $H_2SO_4$) together with thiourea and thiosulfate solution to recover gold and silver. Gold was not dissolved at all into these inorganic acids in the absence of any oxidizing agents. At the same concentration of inorganic acid, the leaching of percentage of Ag was the highest in the sulfuric acid solution. The leaching percentage of silver increased with the increase of HCl concentration owing to the formation of $AgCl_2{^-}$. Copper, nickel and zinc except tin was almost dissolved in these inorganic acids but no tin was dissolved in nitric acid solution. Most of Au and Ag were dissolved into the mixture of sulfuric acid and thiourea solution. Thiosulfate could dissolve some silver from the anode slime but no gold was dissolved by this agent.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.1998-2004
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• 2012

We carried out DFT calculations for monohydrated sulfuric and phosphoric acids. We are interested in clusters which differ in orientation of hydrogen atoms only. Such molecular complexes are close in energy, since they lie in the vicinity of the global minimum energy structure on the flat potential energy surface. For monohydrated sulfuric acid we identified four different isomers. The monohydrated phosphoric acid forms five different conformers. These systems are difficult to study from the theoretical point of view, since binding energy differences in several cases are very small. For each structure, we calculated harmonic vibrational frequencies to be sure that if the optimized structures are at the local or global minima on the potential energy surface. The analysis of calculated -OH vibrational frequencies is useful in interpretation of infrared photodissociation spectroscopy experiments. We employed four different DFT functionals in our calculations. For each structure, we calculated binding energies, thermodynamic properties, and harmonic vibrational frequencies. Our analysis clearly shows that DFT approach is suitable for studying monohydrated inorganic acids with different hydrogen atom orientations. We carried out MP2 calculations with aug-cc-pVDZ basis set for both monohydrated acids. MP2 results serve as a benchmark for DFT calculations.

• Analytical Science and Technology
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.277-283
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• 1992

Acid effects on the ICP-AES signals are studied as the concentrations of nitric acid, hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, and 1:1 mixture of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid are changed. Almost all analyte signals are depressed. The extent of the depression due to the pressence of the acids became to be pecular when the acid concentration was over 1%. Among the acids used, the suppression due to sulfuric acid is most severe and unexpectable. The ratios of the analyte signal to Ar signal and the Mg II signal to Mg I signal are measured as the concentration of the acids changed. In this study, it is proved that the main reason of the signal reduction is the change in the nebulization efficiency, for example, droplet size distribution, viscosity and surface tension variation, not the alteration of plasma excitation characteristics. There was no relationship found between ionization potential and analyte signal reduction in ICP-MS.

• Korean Journal of Hazardous Materials
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.6-11
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• 2014

There have been frequent chemical leaks over the past 10 years. Particularly, inorganic acids like sulfuric acid, nitric acid, and hydrogen chloride take up 37 % of the total chemical accidents which took place for the past 10 years. When an acid chemical leak happens, fume is generated, diffusing into the air, which might cause serious damage to health of local residents and the environment. However, most of the acid-based chemicals, detecting and analysis methods have not been settled considering the frequency of accidents. In this study, we investigated detection and analysis methods to quickly analyze accident sites and evaluate the impacts on environments. Reviewing local and international test analysis methods of acids suggested that nitric acid, sulfuric acid, hydrogen chloride and hydrogen fluoride can be analyzed with IC. It was also found that UV is better for the analysis of hydrogen fluoride and GC/MS for acrylic acid. The analytical methods suggested in the official test methods basically have limitations of consuming much time at stages of preparation and analysis. Considering prompt responses to chemical accidents, further studies should be done to compare the applicability of rapid monitoring methods such as FT-IR, IMR-MS and SIFT-MS.

• 한국전기화학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2003.07a
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• pp.169-171
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• 2003

Organic/inorganic hybrid membranes have been prepared and evaluated as polymer electrolytes in a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). Previously, partially fluorinated poly (arylenether) was synthesized and the polymer was sulfonated by fuming sulfuric acid$(30\%\;SO_3)$. Modification of these polymers with coupling agent and inorganic materials was carried out to prepare membranes. Membranes cast from these materials were investigated in relation to the proton conductivity and weight loss at the room temperature. It was found that these membranes had a higher conductivity of $10^{-2}\;Scm^{-1}$ at the room temperature. But inorganic materials have leaked out from the hybrid membrane. If this problem is resolved, organic/inorganic hybrid membranes will become satisfactory Polymer electrolytes for the PEMFC.