Acid-gas treating has traditionally required an amine plant to remove hydrogen sulphide and a Claus unit to convert the concentrated hydrogen sulphide stream to sulphur. The Sulferox process is an alternative to these steps and consequently offers substantial savings in capital and operating costs by removing hydrogen sulphide directly from gas streams and converting it to elemental sulphur.

Advantages of Sulferox

Removing contaminants from sour streams helps to support efficient operations and maximise the value of the product slate. Sulferox is a flexible system that offers several advantages over conventional systems:

• reduced capital expenditure and lower operating costs
• flexibility to cope with changes in gas volume and hydrogen sulphide content
  
• effective treatment of gases with very low hydrogen sulphide concentrations
  
• non-toxic elemental sulphur product
  
• suitability for low- and high-pressure (<450-psig) applications
  

To date, more than 30 plants worldwide have applied the Sulferox process to produce sulphur at outputs ranging from 0.1 to 20 t/d. Since it was first applied in 1990, it has since been used worldwide for applications including:

• refinery hydrotreater off-gas
• amine off-gas
  
• refinery process streams
  
• coke oven gas
  
• primary natural gas treating
  
• associated gas (onshore and offshore)