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Tag: Sulphur Recovery

Sulphur and renewables

T he end of August saw a paper published in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society by Dr Mark Maslin of University College London. Widely reported, it looked at the prospects for sulphur production in an era of declining fossil fuel use, concluding that there could be “a shortfall in the annual supply of sulphuric acid of between 100 and 320 million tonnes by 2040, depending on how quickly decarbonisation occurs”. It added that “unless action is taken to reduce the need for sulphuric acid, a massive increase in environmentally damaging mining will be required to fulfil this resource demand.”

Claus catalyst performance at end-of-run conditions

Temperature dependent rate constants for the hydrolysis of CS2 and COS across Claus Al2 O3 and TiO2 catalysts are valuable tools for the design and optimisation of new, as well as existing, sulphur recovery units. In this context, Alberta Sulphur Research Ltd (ASRL) has measured CS2 and COS hydrolysis rates over a range of temperatures for both Al2 O3 and TiO2 catalysts under start-of-run and, more recently, end-of-run first converter conditions. In this article Christopher Lavery, Dao Li, Ruohong Sui, and Robert A. Marriott of ASRL report on their methodology and the utility of the kinetics calculated from their data and draw comparisons between the start-of-run and end-of-run results.

Where is oil going?

The past couple of years have been quite the wild ride, with major global events dominating markets outside of the usual concerns of broad market supply and demand. It seems like a long time ago now, but this time last year, the price of a barrel of Brent crude was about $75. Go back two years, in the wake of the onset of covid restrictions, and that barrel would have cost you $40 (and just $25 a couple of months before that). In the wake of Russia’s attack on Ukraine, you could easily have paid $130, and it has been hovering around $110/bbl for the past few months. The last time oil spent any time at that level was in 2014, just before the Chinese economy ran out of steam and prices slumped by 70%.

Detecting water-related issues in sulphur recovery units

Most inspection personnel are familiar with the symptoms of process-related issues; however, they often lack an understanding of the root causes of water-related issues. In this article L. Huchler of MarTech Systems and E. Nasato of Nasato Consulting provide insight about early warning signs of common water-related failures in steam generators and sulphur condensers, proactive monitoring practices, practical operating strategies, options for corrective actions, reminders about robust water-side design and reminders about the challenges of prematurely destroying evidence by prioritising cleaning over diagnostic efforts during turnaround activities.