Proceedings of the
Second International Energy 2030 Conference,
November 4-5, 2008, Abu Dhabi, U.A.E.
Novel Methods for Sour Gas Treatment
Robert M. Baldwin
The Petroleum Institute, UAE
Bruce R. Palmer
The Petroleum Institute, UAE
J. Douglas Way
Colorado School of Mines, USA
Abstract
Sour natural gas is currently treated to remove CO2 and H2S and the concentrated H2S stream is sent to a Claus process to convert the H2S to elemental sulfur. However, the per-pass H2S conversion is only 93-
96%, resulting in some “slip” of the H2S from the catalytic reaction stage of the process [1]. This stream
contains small quantities of H2S which must be further treated. An efficient solution to this environmental
separation problem would be to continuously remove and concentrate the H2S from the tail gas, and then
recycle this concentrated H2S stream back to the Claus process. While this research project is tailored for
process gas streams that contain small amounts of H2S, the developments will also apply to streams containing high concentrations of this component.
