A survey on exergy, energy and environmental analysis of sulfur recovery unit in case of five intensified configurations

In this study, a combination of energy and exergy analysis is applied for the industrial sulfur recovery unit (SRU) in commercial simulation software. The data of energy and exergy are obtained from the simulator and Excel (for physical and chemical exergy), respectively. In doing so, five intensified SRU configurations namely: (1) hot gas bypass (2) acid gas bypass (3) inlet stream preheating (4) acid gas enrichment and (5) oxygen (air) enrichment are compared in terms of energy production, reaction furnace temperature, sulfur recovery and pollutant emission into environment. Then, irreversibility in these five arrangements is compared and all the proposed methods show higher useful exergy comparing to the design case while the preheating method was the highest. Eventually, the main contributors and sources of exergy destruction are first incinerator (about 29–36%), then reaction furnace and waste heat boiler.