Hydrogen and Sulfur Production from Hydrogen Sulfide Wastes

A new hydrogen sulfide waste-treatment process that uses microwave plasma-chemical technology is currently under development in the Soviet Union and in the United States. Whereas the present waste treatment process only recovers sulfur at best, this novel process recovers both hydrogen and sulfur. The plasma process involves dissociating hydrogen sulfide in a "nonequilibrium" plasma in a microwave or radio-frequency reactor. After the dissociation process, sulfur is condensed and sold just as is currently done. The remaining gases are purified and separated into streams containing the product hydrogen, the hydrogen sulfide to be recycled to the plasma reactor, and the process purge containing carbon dioxide and water. This process has particular implications for petroleum refining industry, in which hydrogen is a widely used reagent and must be produced from increasingly scarce hydrocarbon resources. The modular nature of the new process may also offer economic advantages over small-scale waste treatment technologies widely used in the natural-gas industry. Laboratory-scale experiments with pure hydrogen sulfide indicate that conversions exceeding 90% are possible with appropriate reactor design and that the energy required to dissociate hydrogen sulfide is low enough for the plasma process to be economically competitive. In addition, the experiments show-that typical refinery acid-gas streams are compatible with the plasma process and that all by-products can be treated with existing technology