Plasma treatment in sulfur recovery

A method of removing sulfur compounds from gas, comprising:

• providing a feed gas comprising sulfur compounds including hydrogen sulfide (H2S) to a furnace of a sulfur recovery unit (SRU);
• reacting H2S with sulfur dioxide (SO2) in the furnace and in catalytic converters of the SRU to give elemental sulfur and water (H2O);
• condensing elemental sulfur vapor in condenser heat exchangers of the SRU and discharging elemental liquid sulfur from the condenser heat exchangers for recovery;
• discharging an SRU tail gas comprising H2S from the SRU to a hydrogenation reactor of a tail gas treatment (TGT) unit;
• converting sulfur compounds in the SRU tail gas in the hydrogenation reactor into H2S;
• discharging a process gas comprising H2S from the hydrogenation reactor to a quench tower of the TGT unit and removing water vapor from the process gas in the quench tower;
• discharging an overhead gas comprising H2S from the quench tower to a non-thermal plasma (NTP) reactor of the TGT unit;
• converting H2S in the NTP reactor into hydrogen (H2) and elemental sulfur;
• and
• discharging a gas from an NTP unit comprising the NTP reactor to a thermal oxidizer, wherein the gas comprises the process gas as treated in the NTP reactor minus the elemental sulfur that is recovered.