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Optimisation of a sulphur recovery unit

Prior to Suncor’s purchase of the Spirit River facility, little attention was given to the LO-CAT® unit. In general, over injecting chemicals into a LO-CAT unit will not result in operating problems, just higher than required operating costs. Consequently, in remote gas plants such as Spirit River, it is sometimes difficult to convince operators to change operating conditions if the unit is not presenting any operating problems. However, this is not Suncor’s operating philosophy.

Upon taking ownership of the facility, Suncor contacted Merichem and stated that the operating costs associated with the LO-CAT unit were not cost effective and something had to be done about chemical consumption, power consumption and the disposal cost of blowdown liquid or the unit would be shutdown. At this point, Suncor and Merichem started working closely together to optimize the system. The Suncor LO-CAT unit is operating at close to the design conditions of 123.4 Nm3/Hr of acid gas containing 57.5% H2S (2.19 MT/day of sulfur). As suspected, an initial examination of the unit and a review of historical operating data show that the chemical addition rates were much higher than the original design rates, and that the operators were maintaining a lower solution specific gravity than required by maintaining a higher than normal blowdown rate. For example, the iron concentration was being maintained at more than twice the design level while the chelate concentration was more than three times the design level.

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