The study of the main parameters affecting the efficiency of Claus reactor and construction of linguistic models for assessing the quality of produced sulfur

Abstract

Analysis of the key technological factors of sulfur recovery process and their impact on operating efficiency of Claus reactor sulfur recovery unit at thermal and catalytic stages was carried out. The composition of acid gas entering Claus reactor and hydrogen sulfide (H₂S); carbon dioxide (CO₂), vapors of water, hydrocarbons, oxygen, COS and CS₂, and their impact on sulfur recovery process were studied and analyzed. Dependence diagrams of the influence of selected technological factors on sulfur recovery process rates were constructed.The quality of the produced sulfur is estimated on the basis of linguistic models developed using the initial fuzzy information. Linguistic models are developed on the basis of recovery model of knowledge representation and they describe the dependence of sulfur quality indices (sulfur grade) from the mass fractions of sulfur, ash, organic substances, and water. To describe a fuzzy term ‘high quality’ of sulfur, structures of membership functions were determined.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS:

• Claus reactor
• sulfur recovery process
• linguistic model
• fuzzy information
• membership function

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s)