SIMULATION OF HYDROGEN SULFIDE DECOMPOSITION PROCESS IN MEMBRANE REACTOR

A huge amount of H2S produces naturally in many gas wells and is often present in natural gas. H2S can be considered as resources for two salable, hydrogen and sulfur, production. The success in this field will result in waste minimization, resource utilization and environmental pollution reduction. Different technologies such as, thermal, thermo-chemical, electrochemical, photolytic and plasmolytic have been used in small scale for this purpose. In this study, firstly different processes for converting waste H2S to hydrogen and sulfur have been compared and the thermal-catalytic decomposition method followed by product removal by membrane is suggested to be one of the most practical and economical method for industrialization. Hysys package was used for simulation of a large scale H2S conversion membrane reactor to investigate effect of various parameters on hydrogen production yield. Results are shown that hydrogen yield has been decreased with temperature and molar flow rate increasing. The optimum temperature is between 600 to 650oC. Increasing of pressure difference between permeate and reaction side lead better hydrogen yield. As the major capital cost is related to membrane reactor, it is found that if the reactor structure is modified in which the specific area is maximized, the process will be more economic.

Keywords:

hydrogen , sulfur , hydrogen sulfide , simulation , membrane reactor