SO2 Burner / Furnace Design 4

[m291068]

Hello All

Would anyone like to share his/her design experience about sulfur burning furnace, especially on the sulfur firing nozzle. Recommendations to available literature and manufacturers will be another favour.

Thaks

 

[roker]

try TPA.

regards

 

[onepotato]

Are you really talking about sulfur burning, or H2S? Most of my work has been to get H2S converted to sulfur, and we really do not want to burn it back to SO2 once we get it there. What is your industry, are you trying to make Acid?

The last time I talked with TPA was several years ago, but they were primarilly into sulfur recovery, not sulfur utilization. Though they may have specific knowledge of people in the sulfur utilization end of the business.

 

[m291068]

Thank you both and let me inform you that we are in sulfur burning business, I mean production of sulfuric acid by contact process. I provide support to plants working in various parts of the world. Currently we are in the process of upgrading a plant and want to increase the production capacity. I currently have no experience with burner nozzle design and am looking for available information on this topic.
It will be very helpful if you can point me to specific literature or manufacturer regarding this topic.

Note: I have already been to Enviro Chem websit.

Thanks once again.

 

[ApC2Kp]

m291068,
Most other industries deal with sulfur as a problem to clean up. There is now so much sulfur from Claus sulfur recovery plants that the Frasch process sulfur market has been depressed until the recent recovery of the agricultural sector demanding more fertilizer and hence more sulfuric acid to extract phosphorus for fertilizer phos acid. The other small production of SO2 has been for pulp and paper bleaching, and that industry has been in decline. Unless someone is in the acid industry they might mis-understand your intention to increase SO2 production.
Envirochem and other acid plant designers typically work on plants with capacities from 1000 to over 4000 tons per day acid. The sulfur burners are typically carbon steel vessels lined with fire brick. Before atomizing nozzle technology became available, molten sulfur was fed to pans for burning. Now there are one to five nozzles that atomize the molten sulfur for combustion. The sulfur burner vessel is designed with sufficient volume and brick baffles for good mixing and residence time for complete sulfur combustion.
The pressure atomizing nozzles might be similar to nozzles for oil fired boilers, but the nozzles need to be designed for the density and viscosity of molten sulfur. Sulfur atomizing nozzles are positioned inside the sulfur burner on the tip of 'sulfur guns' with special designs to maintain the molten sulfur in flowing conditon and also cool the 'sulfur gun' from the combustion heat.
The 'sulfur gun' design is much different from the oil burner gun of a boiler. Boiler tubes and water walls are cooler than the fire brick inside a sulfur burner. If the molten sulfur is heated to excess temperature before reaching the atomizing nozzle, the increased viscosity fluid would be difficult to atomize. One independent vendor of 'sulfur guns' and nozzles wouold be RIANO. You could find them on h2so4today.com site. There was the site of 'sulfuric acid on the web' that was very good, but has been unavailable due to changes of the internet host server. The extensive information there was assembled by Douglas K. Louie Engineering who did work for Envirochem, and the information hopefully will be re-established on a new site. Another source for information might be the sulfur pump vendors, see lewispumps.com as they understand molten sulfur very well. When increasing your sulfur burning capacity, remember to check all the basic parameters of the process, and then some more!
Envirochem has updated their name for 'sulfur guns' to be "sulfur spraying apparatus" to avoid customs and export questions as to whether the equipment was considered to be a WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction).

 

[sulphuric]

Sorry for replying to this thread a bit late. ApC2Kp has provided good information on sulphur burners. In addition to pressure atomization type "sulphur spraying apparatus" the other most popular type of burner is a rotary cup spray atomizer. Molten sulphur is introduced to the inside of a rapidly spinning cup. As the liquid reaches the edge of the cup, it is sheared off the edge into fine droplets that rapidly burn in the furnace. This type of burner is available from Saacke/Outokumpu Technology (formerly Lurgi)and is marketed as the LURO Burner. Another source for a similar burner is W.N. Best Burners.
The Sulphuric-Acid-on-the-Web website can be found at

http://www.sulphuric-acid.com.

 

[augiedog]

I think Kaverner also have designs for liquid sulphur burnes