(4d) Low Temperature H2S Removal from CO with High Activity Sorbent

Hydrogen sulfide H₂S is a common impurity found in chemical feedstocks that poisons many common industrial catalysts. Although extensive research has been carried out to remove H₂S from gas mixtures, particularly natural gas, no study reports H₂S removal at ambient temperatures specifically from CO stream in our knowledge. Such conditions occur while removing H₂S from the gas mixture produced out of incomplete combustion of petroleum coke. We tested various reactive sorbents commonly used in natural gas desulfurization at 40°C under 8.6 barg pressure, and found only one reactive sorbent that effectively removes H₂S from a reducing CO stream at these conditions.

The unreacted core model is used to describe H₂S capture process in reactive sorbents, with the apparent reaction rate determined by the combination of external mass transfer, intra-particle diffusion and surface reaction. In the regime of intra-particle diffusion control, an analytical formula is derived to relate the dimensionless bed life to the local Peclet number and the dimensionless capacity.