Objective
The main objective of the project is to provide the operators of sour natural fields with an innovative industrial solution to recover 99.9 % sulphur from the acid gases. It is a twofold objective:
- to improve the performances of sulphur recovery units (SRUs), up to an overall yield of 99.9 % by further processing of SRU tail gas, prior to final incineration of tail gas and release to atmosphere,
- to minimize capital and operating costs (with significant energy savings), by comparison with other existing commercial technologies.
The most currenty used technology that is based on the implementation of a recycled solvent washing system, is known to be very costly in capital and operating expenditures (CAPEX-OPEX). In particular, it exhibits very high energy requirements for regenerating (reboiling) the aqueous solvent. By comparison, the technology of the project is much less energy demanding, since energy requirement is limited to the heat of vaporization of sulphur recovered.
Completion of process design; complete process book, drawings of the skid arrangement with piping, datasheets for main equipment, specifications of safety systems, list of instruments are available. The major equipment items have been ordered.
The steel construction was assembled, vessels and machinery were placed. The pipework is under construction. Electrical/control systems under completion. Site studies for connections were completed.
The plant on skid was shipped to lacq after completion and installed on site. The commissioning is over. The operation has started with first performance results on line with the expectations. Main results relative to the optimisation of the adsorption/reaction phase have been collected and the expected performance has been achieved.
The demonstration pilot unit, to be installed in the Lacq natural gas plant of ELF EP (SW of France), will be sized to process 1000 Nm3/h of tail gas diverted from the outlet of one sulphur recovery train. It will be designed with two catalytics reactors:
- First catalytic reactor (Rl) to perform the complete conversion into H2S of residual sulphur compounds (Svap SO2 - COS - CS2) contained in SRU tail gas. This will be achieved by complete hydrogenation + hydrolysis of these compounds over a Co Mo type catalyst operating at 300 deg. C.
- Second catalytic reactor (R2) to perform the direct and selective oxydation of H2S into sulphur (H2S + 1/2 O2S + H2O) over the newly developed catalyst, at temperature below sulphur dew point in the process gas (100 - 130 deg. C). Air needed for the reaction is injected at requisite rate, to the reactor inlet. Sulphur so formed remains adsorbed in the catalyst. It is recovered by vaporization in heating up the catalyst up to about 300 deg. C.
This operation is carried out by means of a regeneration loop composed of the electrical heater E01 operating at 300 deg. C, the reactor (R2) to be regenerated, the sulphur condenser E02 where sulphur is recovered in liquid form by cooling down regeneration gas down to 150 deg. C and the blower K01 for recycling the regeneration gas back to the heater. The catalytic reactor (R2) is then cooled down to 100-130 deg. C by setting up the process gas circuit, back to the previous configuration (reaction step).
When cooling of reactor (R2) is completed, it can be put back on the tail gas circuit for the next step of epuration. Switching the reactors from steps to steps is automatically controlled by means of sequence timer according to the requisite timing.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringcontrol systems
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringenergy and fuelsfossil energynatural gas
- natural scienceschemical sciencescatalysis
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringwaste managementwaste treatment processes
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Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
DEM - Demonstration contractsCoordinator
92500 Rueil Malmaison
France