What Are Sulfuric Acid Plants

Sulfuric Acid Plants

The production of industrial grade sulfuric acid is a multi-step process whereby sulfur or sulfur dioxide is converted into sulfuric acid. In its simplest design, sulfur is thermally oxidized to sulfur dioxide, catalyzed to sulfur trioxide, and reacted with water to form sulfuric acid.  Additional equipment, such as heat exchangers, gas cleaning equipment, and demisters are typically required to meet process and emission objectives.

Sulfuric Acid Plant

There are three main sources of sulfur for acid plants: sulfur generated from the Claus process at refineries, sulfur dioxide emitted from metallurgical roasting, and recovered sulfuric acid. The key to successful sulfuric acid production is to sufficiently clean the gas to prevent fouling of the expensive catalyst.

The design of a gas cleaning system for a sulfuric acid plant depends on the nature of contaminants in the feed.  Particulate plugs the catalyst.  Heavy metals poisons the catalyst.  Moisture must also be removed to prevent sulfuric acid formation outside of the catalyst beds.  Most gas cleaning systems use a combination of wet scrubbers and wet electrostatic precipitators (WESPs) to meet the stringent requirements of the gas entering the catalyst beds.

Sulphuric acid is widely used in different business areas such as:

● Fertilizers

● Mining industry

● Waste gas treatment

Conventional Process (Dry route) Principle

Process technology is based on the production of sulphur dioxide (SO2) by sulphur burning using dry air, followed by catalytic conversion to produce sulphur trioxide (SO3) which is finally absorbed in water (H2O) to obtain sulphuric acid (H2SO4)

All the above reactions are extremely exothermic at high temperatures and therefore the recovery of the heat generated during the process is highly valuable.

The typical converter configuration is based on 4 stages of catalytic conversion with the possibility to increase by 1 stage and/or to use a combination of vanadium/cesium based catalyst when lowest emissions are required.

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