User:Amse12

WSA Process

(Wet gas Sulphuric Acid)

The WSA process is one out of many gas desulfurization processes on the market today. Since its introduction in the 1980s, it has been recognised as an efficient process for recovering sulphur from various process gasses in the form of commercial quality sulphuric acid. The WSA process is applied in all industries where removal of sulphur is an issue.

Wet catalysis processes differ from other contact sulphuric acid processes in that the feed gas still contains moisture when it comes into contact with the catalyst. The sulphur trioxide formed by catalytic oxidation of the sulphur dioxide reacts instantly with the moisture to produce sulphuric acid in the vapour phase to an extent determined by the temperature. Liquid acid is subsequently formed by condensation of the H₂SO₄ (sulphuric acid) vapour and not by absorption of the sulphur trioxide in concentrated sulphuric acid, as is the case in contact processes based on dry gases. The concentration of the product acid depends on the H₂O/SO₃ ration in the catalytically converted gases and on the condensation temperature.Cite error: The <ref> tag has too many names (see the help page).

The wet catalysis process is especially suitable for processing the wet gasses obtained by the combustion of H₂S (hydrogen sulphide)-containing off-gasses.^[1] The combustion gasses are merely cooled to the converter inlet temperature of about 420-440°C. To process these wet gasses in a conventional cold-gas Contact process (DCDA) plant would necessitate cooling the gas to an economically unacceptable extent to remove the large excess of moisture. Therefore in many cases Wet catalysis processes is a more cost-efficient way of treating H₂S containing off-gases.

The technology is able to treat one or more sulphur containing streams such as:
H₂S gas from amine gas treating unit
SWS gas
Spent acid
Claus process tail gas
Heavy residue or petcoke-fired utility boiler off-gas
FCC regenerator
Bolier flue gas

^ Gary, J.H. and Handwerk, G.E. (1984). Petroleum Refining Technology and Economics (2nd Edition ed.). Marcel Dekker, Inc. ISBN 0824771508. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

[Gary-1] Gary, J.H. and Handwerk, G.E. (1984). Petroleum Refining Technology and Economics (2nd Edition ed.). Marcel Dekker, Inc. ISBN 0824771508. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

[1]