Emission Free Sulfur Recovery Process Development with Modular Mini-plants in Industrial Plant Bypass

The development of new processes or modifications of existing industrial processes often leads to acceptance issues, because not all real conditions can be reproduced in university facilities. The investigations under ideal conditions are mostly indispensable for scientific tasks, but lead to risks resulting from transferring university results to industry. With a tiered approach using preliminary scientific experiments without impurities from lab to miniplant scale followed by a bypass operation with the real industrial plant is a viable approach to solving this problem. In line with this approach intensive theoretical and experimental studies were carried out in the lab of the chair “Process Dynamics and Operation” of the “Technical University Berlin” for the development of a new emission free sulphuric acid process. In a further step a mobile, modular and fully automated experimental set-up was built and shipped to the industrial partner, where it was operated in bypass of the industrial plant. Main objectives were to gain important insights regarding long-term stability and interaction of secondary components. The application of this approach shows that a very fast and cost effective process development can be realized.