A New Method for Sulfur Components Removal from Sour gas Through Application of Zinc and Iron Oxides Nanoparticles

Use of zinc and iron oxide are common in the desulfurization process from natural gas. In this research, after determinations of the size and specifications through TEM and XRD for each of the metal oxides, two different size ratios were used, 0.66 for zinc oxide and 0.142 for iron oxide. Further, absorption of sulfur compounds in gas (hydrogen sulfide (H2S), carbonyl sulfide (COS), methyl mercaptan (C1SH), ethyl mercaptan (C2SH), dimethyl sulfide (DMS), and carbon disulfide (CS2) were evaluated at 26°C, 15 psi. The separation and identification processes of the sulfur components were measured by gas chromatography with a chemical luminescence sulfur detector. Results show that particle size variation in zinc oxide increased the sulfur removal from H 2, C1SH and C2SH from 9.4% to 15.8%, but in the case of COS, DMS and CS2, no significant sulfur removal was observed. Further, with reduction of iron oxide particle size (from 0.140 µm to 20 nm), the sulfur removal rate increased from 37.9 to 63.1% in all of the natural gas components.