Investigation of Sulfur Recovery Efficiency of SRUs in the Presence of Heavy Aromatic Compounds

Claus process is a well-known industrial method to recover elemental sulfur from hydrogen sulfide in Sulfur Recovery Units (SRUs). Despite high efficiency of such units، these SRUs operate at much lower efficiencies than the standard value of 97% due to some operational shortcomings. Presence of heavy aromatic compounds such as Benzene، Toluene، and Xylene (BTX) within the acid gas feed entering the SRUs، can harmfully affect Claus catalyst performance and decrease the overall efficiency. In this research، Promax simulator was employed to simulate SRUs of Khangiran natural gas refinery. Five different scenarios were discussed to increase the temperature of combustion chamber and BTX destruction as well. Finally، the effect of BTX content entering the catalytic beds was investigated on the efficiency of catalytic beds and the overall sulfur recovery.