Performance of Water–Gas Shift Catalysts under Sorption-Enhanced Water–Gas Shift Conditions

The second pre-combustion decarbonisation technology Sorption Enhanced Water-Gas Shift (SEWGS) combines the WGS reaction with simultaneous CO2 capture by using a mixture of WGS catalyst and CO2 sorbent. Accordingly, the WGS catalyst is exposed to all conditions encountered in the cyclic SEWGS process, such as exposure to steam in the regeneration step. This paper shows that commercial precious metal, FeCr, and CoMo WGS catalysts are robust towards periodic exposure to these atypical conditions. Catalyst behavior is reported to periodic exposure to these atypical conditions at a temperature of 400 ∘C, pressures up to 5 bara and H2S contents from 1 ppm to 2,000 ppm. Although additional experiments need to be performed at increased pressure, it appears that all catalysts can potentially be used in the SEWGS process.