Plasma-chemical conversion of hydrogen sulfide into hydrogen and sulfur.

摘要

A waste-treatment process that recovers both hydrogen and sulfur from hydrogen-sulfide-contaminated industrial wastes is being developed to replace the Claus technology, which recovers only sulfur. The proposed process is based on research reported in the Soviet technical literature and uses microwave (or radio-frequency) energy to initiate plasma-chemical reactions that dissociate hydrogen sulfide into elemental hydrogen and sulfur. In the plasma-chemical process, the gaseous stream would be purified and separated into streams containing the product hydrogen, hydrogen sulfide for recycle to the plasma reactor, and the process purge containing carbon dioxide and water. Since unconverted hydrogen sulfide is recycled to the plasma reactor, the plasma-chemical process has the potential for sulfur recoveries in excess of 99% without the additional tail-gas clean-up processes associated with the Claus technology. Laboratory experiments with pure hydrogen sulfide have confirmed that conversions of over 90% per pass are possible. Experiments with impurities typical of petroleum refinery and natural gas production acid gases have demonstrated that these impurities are compatible with the plasma dissociation process and do not appear to create new waste-treatment problems. Other experiments show that the cyclonic-flow pattern hypothesized by the Russian theoretical analysis of the plasma-chemical process can substantially decrease energy requirements for hydrogen sulfide dissociation while increasing conversion. This process has several advantages over the current Claus-plus-tail-gas-cleanup technology. The primary advantage is the potential for recovering hydrogen more cheaply than the direct production of hydrogen. The difference could amount to an energy savings of 40 (times) 10(sup 15) to 70 (times) 10(sup 15) J/yr in the refining industry, for an annual savings of $500 million to $1,000 million.