Evaluation of the Influence of Operating Parameters in the Modeling and Simulation of Sour Gas Stream Desulfurization by Adsorption

Abstract

Natural gas is a fossil fuel whose participation in the world’s energy matrix has been growing, but before becoming marketable, it has to undergo some treatments to eliminate corrosive compounds. Such treatments focus, mainly, on removing hydrogen sulphide (H2S) and carbon dioxide (CO2), with adsorption being one of the recommended techniques for removal. The presence of H2S in the gas stream can lead to serious problems of corrosion and deposition of elemental sulfur. Its burning can also result in environmental and health problems. In this work, we evaluated the influence of operating parameters (bed length, feed flow of the adsorption column, adsorbate concentration in the gas stream, pressure, and temperature) on the removal of H2S from a gas stream, and to this end, we employed a factorial design, which resulted in the simulation of different cases by modifying the above-cited parameters. To execute the simulations, we used Comsol Multiphysics 4.3a, a computational fluid dynamics software, and processed the results using Statistica 8.0. The results showed that at the significance level of 95%, only pressure and temperature were statistically significant parameters. Moreover, we observed that an increase in pressure favors the adsorption, while for the temperature, the opposite process occurs.

Numerical Study of Syngas Production during Partial Oxidation of Sour Natural Gases upon Activation of Oxygen by an Electrical Discharge

“…In particular, the amount of sulfur in gasoline should not exceed 10 ppm, which is 30 times less than 1 decade ago. To achieve such a low concentration of sulfur in fuel, different methods of separation and treatment of acid gases are used. − …”