Tag: Sulphuric Acid

A look at papers presented at CRU’s annual Sulphur + Sulphuric Acid conference, which was once again held virtually, in November 2021.

It’s a slightly dispiriting fact about the sulphur industry that most of its producers don’t really want it. If you’re a refiner or a sour gas producer, you mainly care about the diesel and gasoline or natural gas that you can process and sell, and the sulphur is just the inconvenient component that the law and your customers force you to remove. But at times when sulphur prices, as they have at the start of this January, reach levels as high as $300/t, then the industry standing joke is that sulphur suddenly stops being a by-product or waste product, and starts to become a ‘co-product’ instead.

Meena Chauhan , Head of Sulphur and Sulphuric Acid Research, Argus Media, assesses price trends and the market outlook for sulphur.

Meena Chauhan, Head of Sulphur and Sulphuric Acid Research, Argus Media, assesses price trends and the market outlook for sulphur.

A seasonal decline in weather conditions in the eastern Atlantic will hinder operations at Jorf Lasfar in Morocco through the end of 2021 and into 2022. In South Africa, port congestion problems were challenging at Richard’s Bay with vessels subjected to 15 day wait times, increasing demurrage costs.

As sulphur recovery units operate at progressively higher temperatures, creep stress in the furnace refractory lining can lead to deformation or even failure of the bricks and require the shutdown of the SRU. UK-based DSF Refractories have developed a product which minimises creep stress damage at high temperatures, for a longer-lived furnace lining.

Th e past year has seen an extraordinary run-up in sulphur and sulphuric acid prices, the former from a low of around $50-70/t f.o.b. in mid-2020 to more than $100/t higher than that at the end of Q1 2021. Prices then plateaued for much of this year, but they have begun moving inexorably upwards again in the past couple of months, drawn by rapidly rising phosphate prices, and Middle East sulphur rates recently breached price levels not seen since 2012.

Lithium-boron miner ioneer Ltd has awarded DuPont Clean Technologies a contract for the license, engineering, and supply of proprietary equipment for a planned sulphuric acid plant at the company’s Rhyolite Ridge project in Nevada. DuPont will work with engineering partner SNC-Lavalin on the plant design, using MECS® sulphuric acid technology for the 3,500 t/d sulphur-burning unit, as well as controls that limit emissions to among the lowest in the world for this type of facility. DuPont will also supply its latest generation MECSSuper GEAR® ™ catalyst and other critical proprietary equipment. The contract is conditional on a final investment decision by the ioneer board of directors.

Developments in sulphuric acid technology and engineering know-how are highlighted by recent project case studies from DuPont Clean Technologies, Metso Outotec and thyssenkrupp Uhde.

M. Rameshni and S. Santo of RATE discuss different sour water stripping gas processing options, depending on contaminants in the sour water streams and site-specific requirements.