Sulphur recovery unit technology, design, operations support and operator training, including for tail gas treating, sour water stripping and amine units.
As refineries and gas plants face increasingly stringent emission limits and fuel-product standards, Wood’s expertise and technology in sulphur recovery, amine treating, and sour water stripping processes can help operating companies address these challenges:
- Ensure emissions comply with requirements with our highly efficient and proven designs, continually updated by technology improvement studies, review of current industry advancements and real-world feedback from operating plants
- Select the optimal process technology for your plant, considering both technical and economic requirements
- Guarantee a smooth startup and long-term reliability with expert support from the design phase to training, startup, optimisation and troubleshooting
Ensure environmental compliance and cleaner air
Custom-designed and versatile processes for handling various sour gas, acid gas and sour water stream compositions
Reduce design costs and payback period
Modular solution optinos with smaller footprint and lower capital cost
Save maintenance efforts and operating expenses
Proprietary acid gas burner with unique open barrel design for direct view through site port to waste heat boiler tubesheet.
Sulphur recovery, tail gas treating, amine treating and sour water stripping technology
We design sulphur recovery unit equipment based on our proprietary know-how, continually improved to meet industry demands for better safety, performance, reliability and recovery/removal efficiency.
Our compact plant layout allows for installations where only minimal space is available.
SRU technology portfolio
Our portfolio includes sulphur recovery, primary and tail gas amine treating, caustic scrubbing and sour water stripping designs, demonstrated through 250+ installed units.
Novel air control scheme
Our design includes Wood’s novel air control scheme philosophy that minimises tail gas analyser action and results in better control of the tail gas H2S:SO2 ratio.
Superior control and recovery
Our unique 2-stage sour water stripper technology provides superior control, allowing refiners to remove ammonia from acid gas feeds, recover it as marketable fertilizer, or incinerate it in low-NOx combustion equipment.
Superior acid gas burner
Our proprietary acid gas burner is fully integrated with the thermal reactor in an acid gas split process design, ensuring thorough ammonia destruction.
Key features include:
- Low air and acid gas pressure drop
- High momentum acid gas and fuel gas injection for thorough
mixing during startup, co-firing, normal operation and shutdown - Symmetrical flame pattern and attachment in thermal reactor
The burner also provides an unobstructed view through the thermal reactor to the front of the boiler, allowing operators to quickly monitor the thermal reactor's operation, flame and refractory conditions.
Revamps and retrofits
Wood has extensive experience in revamping older units to either increase or decrease sulphur throughput, increase unit reliability and safety, and decrease emissions.
- Optimise unit capacity, operability and performance
- SO2 and CO emissions reduction
- Minimise fuel consumption with optimised tail gas incinerator
- Heat recovery to improve energy efficiency
- Experience working in and improving obsolete plant designs with aged or end-of-life equipment
- Replace degraded sulphur pits with above-ground collection and storage
Troubleshooting
We can review and analyse operating data to help identify problems, root causes and develop corrective actions to restore optimal performance, including for:
Catalyst deactivation: Rapid deactivation of the Claus catalyst can occur due to contaminants such as oxygen or BTEX breakthrough from the thermal reactor, and sulfur and soot deposition.
Analyser and air control errors: Errors in tail gas analysers can lead to inaccurate readings and operational inefficiencies. Wood can provide a novel air control scheme to better control the tail gas H2S:SO2 ratio.
Waste heat boiler issues: Fouling in waste heat boilers can lead to increased H2S sulfidation corrosion rates and operational disruptions. Waste heat boiler tube failures can cause costly downtime and repairs.
Advantages of Wood's SRU technology
Cutting-edge, dependable designs
Predictable, reliable operation confidence and SRU robustness.
Deep expertise and industry knowledge
Ensures you get the best solution, optimised for your application.
Proprietary acid gas burner
Low pressure drop, easy to maintain, with clear view of thermal reactor and tubesheet. CFD-optimised design, working in synergy with our thermal reactor.
Reduced maintenance frequency
Due to proven proprietary process and equipment designs.
Novel air control
Developed in-house, providing improved tail gas ratio control for better sulfur recovery.
Interactive operator training
Empowering operating teams and engineers with skills to effectively manage the unit.
Custom process schemes
Tailored to your specific recovery needs.
Engineering and optimisation support
We’re here to support your plant to perform the best it possibly can – from new unit design and startups to existing unit improvements and troubleshooting.
Sulphur recovery experience
Wood (and legacy Foster Wheeler) has designed and supported over 500 sulphur projects over the last 50+ years.
Our experience covers a wide range of feed compositions and contaminants, including amine treating and regeneration (ARU), sour water stripping (SWS) – single and 2-stage, sulphur recovery (SRU) – including ammonia destruction and tail gas treating.
Unit sizes range from 4 to over 650 mT/day, meeting sulphur recovery efficiency requirements of up to 99.98%+ to enable the most stringent SO2 emission limits to be achieved.
SRU, SWS and ARU design, installation and performance optimisation
CHS Laurel, MT
Wood provided full support from conceptual design to installation and performance optimisation for processing sour off-gas from a Coker, including a primary amine absorber, LPG absorber, amine regenerator, COS converter, 1-Stage SWS, SRU, amine-based TGTU, and incinerator.
We also designed a new two-stage SWS unit and reviewed the operation of an existing ARU that resulted from a change to a high-nitrogen crude.
The two-stage SWS vastly improved SRU sulfur throughput by removing ammonia from the SRU feed, which improved the overall SRU complex performance and emissions.
SRU optimisation
Repsol La Pampilla
Following a significant decrease in crude sulfur content, the refinery needed to reduce the SRU capacity while maintaining unit performance.
Wood performed a detailed study to identify the required modifications to process a lower feed rate with stable operation.
Our support should allow Repsol to run the unit under the new feed conditions while meeting emissions limits.
Acid gas burner replacement
BP Castellon
Wood designed and oversaw the fabrication of the proprietary acid gas burners.
Two older SRU trains in the refinery needed burner replacements. Wood expedited the design and fabrication to accommodate BP’s tight turnaround timeline.
With the new burners, BP could continue to operate the SRUs and meet their emission requirements.
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Frequently asked questions
Sulphur recovery technology and specifications
We can accommodate a vast range of specs and standards with fully customisable solutions for your entire sour gas and liquid processing block from sour water stripping and amine treating & regeneration to sulphur recovery.
Sulfur throughput from 4 to over 650 metric tons per day. Single and 2-stage sour water stripping technology with option for ammonia incineration or recovery.
Amine treating with generic or proprietary amines, or caustic scrubbing to meet 99.98+% sulfur removal. We regularly design units to stringent World Bank Standards of 150 mg SOx per Nm3 (3% O2 dry basis).
Our typical 3-bed Claus sulphur recovery units generally achieve 97.5% sulphur recovery efficiency. Wood’s tail gas unit designs recover or remove nearly all of the remaining sulphur, ensuring maximum conversion of H2S to elemental sulphur and minimum atmospheric emissions.
Our technology is robust against feed composition and flow rate variations, maintaining consistent performance through advanced control systems.
We design and supply our proprietary acid gas burner for use in the SRU. We also provide design details of certain other critical equipment in our units.
Yes, we have extensive experience working on projects in various jurisdictions globally.
We comply with American ASME standards, European PED standards and other local requirements.
Our sulphur recovery technology is designed with the future in mind. It is easily adaptable to regulatory changes and capable of incorporating advancements in sulphur recovery processes.
We regularly improve and update our technology through research, review of industry advancements and client feedback.
Our units are custom-designed to meet our clients’ specific requirements. We do not off “off-the-shelf” designs. Our technology is designed by engineers for engineers, and we can provide complete technical support from planning to optimisation and troubleshooting.
We are unique in that we design and supply the acid gas burner for our units, enabling us to ensure optimum performance.
Due to our in-house designs, engineering expertise, and refining knowledge, we only work with third parties when highly specialized equipment is necessary for the process.
Our strong partnerships with amine, catalyst, and other vendors allow us to offer faster turnaround times than other sulphur technology licensors.
Integration and support
Our SRU equipment is designed for seamless integration with minimal downtime, thanks to our in-house customisable designs specific to your facility.
Our team of experienced engineers and sour gas processing specialists offer extensive technical support as well as engineering and operator training programs to ensure that your team is fully prepared to operate and maintain the unit.
Sulphur recovery units are often assigned to younger operators. We can help your engineers get up-to-speed and become more familiar with operational best practices and optimisation techniques.
Our experienced team is available to assist in the entire sulphur processing complex including SRU, ARU, SWS, amine treating, sulphur degassing, handling, and storage, and NH3 recovery or incineration.
As a full-scale technology and service provider with decades of experience, we can support all areas of your processing facility.