I cannot imagine anything more painful.
One can only hope he had a heart attack and was dead when he fell into the acid.
It happened to Hope on Days of Our Lives when she wanted to leave the show so that is how they killed her off, however 10 years later she came back as her same character with a small band aid on her face, lol.
My first job after the Navy, in 1962, was at a firm making diamond drill bits for the oil industry and the State highway dept.
One of my tasks was to take the used bits to reclaim the diamonds. Required electricity and acid to desolve the metal matrix. When pouring in acid to the tank from a carboy one day, it suddenly sloshed and hit me in the upper body.
Fortunately I had on glasses and immediately turned on the water to soak my face. The VP of the company helped me walk to his convertible Buick Wildcat and drove at very high speed to a local health facility. I couldn’t see much but they washed my eyes and applied other “potions”, so I had no long-term effects.
The pain from the acid was great, even though I was able to quickly apply water to dilute the effect. ...I really don’t even want to imagine the pain and suffering of someone falling into a vat of acid!
Apologies for the long-winded post. Subject just raised memories.