Experimental and theoretical study of fluidized bed for SO2 recovery as sulfur from effluent gases from sulfur production unit

•The quality and behavior of SO2 removal with aluminum oxide catalyst is studied.•The mathematical modeling is used to predict the effect of operating conditions.•The effect of various geometrical conditions on SO2 removal is evaluated.•The average deviation value between theoretical and experimental results is 7.2%.

This paper studies the adsorption process behavior of SO2 removal in one fluidized bed reactor which is filled with aluminum oxide catalysts. The performance of catalytic bed is analyzed experimentally and theoretically in this work. Sulfur elimination from gas is the major purpose of the handled experiments. The influence of bed height, bed width, diameter of aluminum oxide particles which affects the mass transfer surface area, operating conditions such as temperature and pressure which affects the mass transfer coefficient and rate of reaction and also superficial velocity of inlet gas which affects the residence time are measured and discussed. Results show the increase in the percentage of SO2 removal with increasing sorbent aluminum content and bed height. The increase in the percentage of SO2 removal with increase of operating temperature (0.41%), pressure (0.21%), superficial velocity (0.5%), bed diameter (0.16%), bed height (0.58%), and surface area (0.63%) and with decrease of particle diameter (0.54%) are obtained. The applied mathematical model can predict the experimental data with an average accuracy of 92%.