Method of recovering sulfurous components in a sulfur-recovery process

A process for removing H2S from an H2S-rich gas and producing sulfur, which comprises feeding the H2S-rich gas and an SO2-rich gas, the H2S being in stoichiometric excess, into a reactor column in the presence of a solvent that catalyzes their reaction to form liquid sulfur and water vapor;

• wherein a first aqueous stream is injected at one or more points of the reactor column to absorb a part of the, heat of reaction by water vaporization;
• wherein the H2S-rich off-gas is scrubbed with a second aqueous stream in the upper section of the reactor column to recover solvent vapor and unreacted SO2 and is then cooled to condense water;
• combusting the H2S-rich off-gas to produce SO2 to be fed to the reactor column;
• absorbing SO2 from the combustion gas by contacting the gas with an SO2 absorbent in an absorber to obtain an SO2-rich absorbent;
• and stripping SO2 from the SO2-rich absorbent to obtain an SO2-rich gas;
• which process further comprises:
• (a) burning the cooled H2S-rich off-gas with an amount of O2-rich gas in a furnace such that, substantially all hydrogen is converted to H2O, and at least 90% of the sulfur is converted to SO2 while at least 0.1% of sulfur is converted to sulfur vapor;
• (b) cooling the SO2-rich gas from step (a) by direct contact with cooled water to produce an aqueous slurry containing solid sulfur;
• (c) absorbing SO2 from the cooled SO2-rich gas in an SO2 absorber by contacting the gas with an SO2 absorbent to obtain an SO2-rich absorbent;
• (d) stripping SO2 from the SO2-rich absorbent to obtain an SO2-rich gas;
• and
• (e) using the slurry of solid sulfur suspended in water from step (b) as a part of the first aqueous stream injected at one or more points of the reactor column to absorb a part of the heat of reaction by vaporization.

A process for removing H2S from an H2S-rich gas and producing sulfur, which comprises:

• (a) reacting H2S from the H2S-rich gas with SO2 in a reactor in the presence of an organic liquid to produce sulfur and a reactor off-gas containing H2S and H2O, wherein the SO2 is introduced into the reactor as a gas;
• (b) combusting the reactor off-gas to produce a combustion gas containing SO2 and water vapor;
• (c) cooling the combustion gas from step (b) to condense water vapor and produce an aqueous stream;
• (d) recovering SO2 from the cooled combustion gas;
• (e) introducing SO2 from step (d) into the reactor as the SO2 gas of step (a);
• and
• (f) introducing the aqueous stream from step (c) into the reactor to provide cooling for the reaction of step (a).