Study of fixed bed reactor for removing H₂S by ferric oxide

Hydrogen sulfide gas could escape from storage tank area in the process of crude oil storage and transportation, which can pollute the surrounding environment. According to the characteristics of crude oil tank area, a process with fixed bed reactors for removing volatile gas H₂S from the crude oil by ferric oxide was proposed in this study. In order to understand the desulfurization process, a mathematical model of the fixed bed desulfurization reactor was established and the simulation was performed by using the COMSOL software. The simulation result shows that the breakthrough curves under different conditions are in reasonable agreement with the experimental data. Moreover, the investigation into the effect on the adsorption capacity indicates that the breakthrough capacity of the ferric oxide desulfurizing agent increases with the decrease of the space velocity in the range from 1500 h^-1 to 4200 h^-1. If the space velocity decreases further, the breakthrough capacity decreases. The breakthrough time and capacity increase with the increase of the temperature. In addition, the variation of the input H₂S concentration changes the breakthrough time, but it has no influence on the variation of sulfur capacity under the same space velocity condition.