Description

Flow measurement of sour water

Requirements

  • Process control
  • Fluid contains traces of hydrocarbons
  • Agressive medium

Description

Flow measurement of off gas

Requirements

  • Ensure optimized burner control
  • Fluctuating operating conditions

Description

Compressed air flow measurement

Requirements

  • Process control

Description

Flow measurement of steam

Requirements

  • Could be very high temperature
  • Process control

Description

Flow measurement of tail gas

Requirements

  • Determine the performance of the process
  • Agressive medium

Description

Flow measurement of molten sulfur

Requirements

  • Maintain mass balance
  • Process control
  • Agressive medium

Description

Flow measurement of sour gas

Requirements

  • Process control
  • Agressive medium

Description

Supervisory and validation software

Requirements

  • Visualisation and monitoring of critical processes
  • Control of reporting, trends and alarm handling
  • Statistical evaluation of measurement data

Overview

Sulfur recovery in the oil & gas industry

Flow and temperature control of sulfur discharge

The Claus process is the most widely used gas desulfurizing process, removing the hydrogen sulfide (a poisonous gas) from the refinery sour gases and producing elemental sulfur as a valuable by-product.

The refinery gases, including those from the atmospheric distillation column, plus other sour gases are separated into fuel gas and hydrogen sulfide in the Amine treatment stage. Then in the Claus process, the hydrogen sulfide is mixed with air in the correct proportions, and passed through a reaction furnace, where the gases react at the very high temperature – over 850°C. In a condenser stage hot liquid sulfur is extracted, and the process is repeated on the remaining gas.

The sulfur discharge is monitored and controlled using a molten sulfur flowmeter with an integrated heating jacket: flow and temperature control is important as if the sulfur temperature rises too much, the viscosity increases due to the formation of polymers. KROHNE offers an ultrasonic flowmeter with an integral heating jacket for this application. Other Claus sulfur recovery process instrumentation available from KROHNE includes vortex flowmeters for balancing the gas and steam flows, and electromagnetic flowmeters for controlling the condenser water flows.

Email
Contact