Charles Kimantas - Bechtel
Martin Taylor - Bechtel
In a challenging regulatory and economic environment, refiners and gas plants need to simultaneously expand hydrocarbon production and meet more stringent sulfur emissions. Naturally, sweet hydrocarbon resources are preferred to sour, and are processed first. So with the exception of the shale boom currently seen in the United States, sources of hydrocarbons are generally becoming more sour. This can result in an increase in sulfur as H2S feed to the Claus sulfur recovery unit. In addition, higher severity hydrotreating can result in increased ammonia in the sour water stripper acid gas feed to the Claus unit. Examples of sulfur plant expansion to be discussed include three different levels of oxygen enrichment, use of SO2, tail gas compression, ammonia recovery, hydrocarbon minimization,
and pressure drop minimization.