(4d) Low Temperature H2S Removal from CO with High Activity Sorbent | AIChE

(4d) Low Temperature H2S Removal from CO with High Activity Sorbent

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Hydrogen sulfide H2S is a common impurity found in chemical feedstocks that poisons many common industrial catalysts. Although extensive research has been carried out to remove H2S from gas mixtures, particularly natural gas, no study reports H2S removal at ambient temperatures specifically from CO stream in our knowledge. Such conditions occur while removing H2S from the gas mixture produced out of incomplete combustion of petroleum coke. We tested various reactive sorbents commonly used in natural gas desulfurization at 40°C under 8.6 barg pressure, and found only one reactive sorbent that effectively removes H2S from a reducing CO stream at these conditions.

The unreacted core model is used to describe H2S capture process in reactive sorbents, with the apparent reaction rate determined by the combination of external mass transfer, intra-particle diffusion and surface reaction. In the regime of intra-particle diffusion control, an analytical formula is derived to relate the dimensionless bed life to the local Peclet number and the dimensionless capacity.