Economic and Environmental Approach to Acid Gas Disposal at the Eastern Desert using Modified Claus Process

When sour natural gases are sweetened with any suitable gas-sweetening process, the produced acid gases Hydrogen Sulfide and Carbon Dioxide must be further processed to dispose of the sulfur in the hydrogen sulfide. Disposing of this sour gas in a cost-effective and environmentally responsible manner represents a significant challenge. This paper discusses how to safely dispose of the acid gases produced from the Amine sweetening process in an economical method. The study aims the utilization these gases to produce a valuable product such as Elemental Sulfur which is the raw material for different industries. Although many sulfur recovery technologies are available for different conditions and applications, the Claus process is an essential and common method for recovering elemental sulfur from gaseous hydrogen sulfide and is frequently needed as part of gas desulfurization systems. Simulation using HYSYS software has been done for the proposed sulfur recovery unit to produce sulfur from hydrogen sulfide with the lowest cost. The economic evaluation of the results from the simulations showed that the Claus unit would be economically accepted with a reasonable ROI in addition to the expected positive environmental impact of the study.