Kinetic modelling of a commercial sulfur recovery unit based on Claus straight through process: Comparison with equilibrium model

Kinetic modelling of a sulfur recovery unit based on straight through sour natural gas was performed by numerical programming and the model outlet results were compared with industrial data. A recovery of 97.4 mole% sulfur was observed from this unit.It was revealed that kinetic model precisely predicted the outlet results of sulfur, H2S, SO2 and CO2 with 4% absolute relative deviation in combustion furnace and 2% in catalytic convertors. The equilibrium model has shown 3% deviation for prediction of H2S/SO2 ratio from the furnace, whereas the kinetic model has shown only 0.2% deviations from the real results.