Detailed process simulation of syngas treatment with wet sulfuric acid process in a 300 MWe IGCC power plant

Oil and gas play an important role in human activities as the primary energy source that cannot be replaced easily with other energy sources. On the other hand, their depletion and environmental impact are becoming world primary concerns. Hence, integrated coal gasification combined cycle (IGCC) power plant has been one of the attractive options to fulfill the human need for clean energy. This paper focuses on the syngas treatment process that has an important role in removing contaminants and acid gases in syngas. The failure of the syngas treatment process will lead to performance reduction in the power block process because of its unsuitable total sulfur specification in the treated syngas. In this work, we consider four unit processes of syngas treatment which are wet scrubbing unit, HCNCOS hydrolysis unit, acid gas removal (AGR) unit, and syngas saturator unit. The wet sulfuric acid (WSA) process is implemented to increase the SOx conversion. The WSA process was chosen instead of other sulfur treatment process (Claus and Superclaus process) because it can recover more than 99% total sulfur content and convert sulfur to sulfuric acid directly without the intermediate elemental sulfur. A rigorous model of the whole syngas treatment process was developed using Aspen Hysys® with supporting data from 300 MWe IGCC power plant to enhance the model performance.