Results of testing various natural gas desulfurization adsorbents

This article presents the results of testing many commercially available and some experimental sulfur adsorbents. The desired result of our testing was to find an effective method to reduce the quantity of sulfur in natural gas to less than 100 ppb volume (0.1 ppm volume). An amount of 100 ppb sulfur is the maximum limit permitted for Siemens Westinghouse solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs). The tested adsorbents include some that rely only on physical adsorption such as activated carbon, some that rely on chemisorption such as heated zinc oxide, and some that may use both processes. The testing was performed on an engineering scale with beds larger than those used for typical laboratory tests. All tests were done at about 3.45 barg (50 psig). The natural gas used for testing was from the local pipeline in Pittsburgh and averaged 6 ppm volume total sulfur. The primary sulfur species were dimethyl sulfide (DMS), isopropyl mercaptan, tertiary butyl mercaptan, and tetrahydrothiophene. Some tests required several months to achieve a sulfur breakthrough of the bed. It was found that DMS always came through a desulfurizer bed first, independent of adsorption process. Since the breakthrough of DMS always exceeds the 100 ppb SOFC sulfur limit before other sulfurs were detected, an index was created to rate the adsorbents in units of ppm DMS x absorbent bed volume. This index is useful for calculating the expected adsorbent bed lifetime before sulfur breakthrough when the inlet natural gas DMS content is known. The adsorbents that are included in these reports were obtained from suppliers in the United States, the Netherlands, Japan, and England. Three activated carbons from different suppliers were found to have identical performance in removing DMS. One of these activated carbons was operated at four different space velocities and again showed the same performance. When using activated carbon as the basis of comparison for other adsorbents, three high-performance adsorbents were found that removed about 100 to 150 times as much DMS as activated carbon before breakthrough.