Development and industrial application of catalyzer for low-temperature hydrogenation hydrolysis of Claus tail gas

With the implementation of more strict national environmental protection laws, energy conservation, emission reduction and clean production will present higher requirements for sulfur recovery tail gas processing techniques and catalyzers. As for Claus tail gas, conventional hydrogenation catalyzers are gradually being replaced by low-temperature hydrogenation catalyzers. This paper concentrates on the development of technologies for low-temperature hydrogenation hydrolysis catalyzers, preparation of such catalyzers and their industrial application. In view of the specific features of SO2 hydrogenation and organic sulfur hydrolysis during low-temperature hydrogenation, a new technical process involving joint application of hydrogenation catalyzers and hydrolysis catalyzers was proposed. In addition, low-temperature hydrogenation catalyzers and low-temperature hydrolysis catalyzers suitable for low-temperature conditions were developed. Joint application of these two kinds of catalyzers may reduce the inlet temperatures in the conventional hydrogenation reactors from 280 °C to 220 °C, at the same time, hydrogenation conversion rates of SO2 can be enhanced to over 99%. To further accelerate the hydrolysis rate of organic sulfur, the catalyzers for hydrolysis of low-temperature organic sulfur were developed. In lab tests, the volume ratio of the total sulfur content in tail gas can be as low as 131 × 10−6 when these two kinds of catalyzers were used in a proportion of 5:5 in volumes. Industrial application of these catalyzers was implemented in 17 sulfur recovery tail gas processing facilities of 15 companies. As a result, Sinopec Jinling Petrochemical Company had outstanding application performances with a tail gas discharging rate lower than 77.9 mg/m3 and a total sulfur recovery of 99.97%.