SWAPSOL in May had the good fortune of being able to briefly discuss the SWAP with Gerald Ondrey at Chemical Engineering Magazine for a story that appeared in last month’s “Chementator.”

He writes:

Recently at the Global Refining Summit Swapsol Corp. introduced a completely new sour-gas-cleanup process that reduces hydrogen  sulfide levels below detectable levels (under 4 ppb) while reacting with carbon dioxide to form water, sulfur and a polymer of sulfur and carbon (carsul). Although still in the laboratory stage of development, the process promises to have application in cleaning up landfill gas, sour-gas, fluegas and Claus tailgas, as well as serving as an alternative to Claus technology, says Director Wolf Koch.

Named after its discoverers, the Stenger-Wasas Process (SWAP) involves the reaction of H2S and CO2 at temperatures of 70–200°C and ambient to moderate pressures. The exothermic reaction is carried out in a catalyst-packed tubular reactor and produces sulfur, water and carsuls. The catalyst is a naturally occurring mineral ore that is pretreated in a manner analogous to common hydrotreating catalysts. Sulfur can be recovered from carsul by simply heating it, leaving behind a polymer of carbon that may have applications as a construction material. Thus far the company has performed the reaction in 1- and 2-in.-dia. tubular reactors, and believes scaleup to a commercial process with a large shell containing multiple tubes is not a problem. Swapsol is now planning to start testing its applications in a pilot plant and move to the first commercial application — most probably a landfill-gas-cleanup operation — during 2011.

Source http://www.che.com/chementator/Combined-CO2-mitigation-and-H2S-removal_5735.html