Improving Operability and Process Understanding of Sulfur Recovery Units

Sulfur recovery units are particularly difficult to model since they are usually characterized by poor field instrumentation and the phenomena governing their main units and reactions are very complex and quite cumbersome to be explained by first-principles relationships. Specifically, the thermal reaction furnace is the key-element of these processes but there is still not full understanding on its general behavior and on the interactions of the complex phenomena that take place in it. This paper is aimed at proposing an overall sensitivity analysis of the thermal reaction furnace by means of detailed kinetics schemes (800+ reactions). The results are the essential guidelines to improve the operability and safety of sulfur recovery units.