Gas desulfurization

Biogas is increasingly important as a source of sustainable energy. When biogas is produced through any form of anaerobic digestion, it will be mostly polluted with hydrogen sulfide. H₂S concentrations typically vary from 200 ppm to 50,000 ppm. We need to remove H₂S to prevent health, safety, environmental risks, and corrosion of equipment such as gas engines, boilers and piping. This is called gas desulfurization or biogas filtration.

Paques offers sustainable and cost-effective biotechnology for biogas purification. It removes H₂S from anaerobically treated water or solids, from gas, and from bleed air. It is applied in all industries, but specifically in wastewater treatment, anaerobic digestion and oil & gas industries

Gas desulfurization is also necessary when biogas is upgraded to natural gas quality and injected in the grid. THIOPAQ can also be used in a biogas upgrader, where biogas is upgraded to biomethane. After gas treatment in the THIOPAQ^® scrubber, the upgraded biogas can be:

• used in a gas engine or boiler
• used in a local micro gas grid
• distributed as fuel for vehicles

No matter if you are looking for a small standard unit or very large custom design – THIOPAQ^® is the best solution. Paques developed THIOPAQ in cooperation with universities, research institutes and customers and is applied today in many facilities. THIOPAQ provides deep removal of hydrogen sulfide from gas. The system obtains a very high H₂S removal efficiency, exceeding 99,5%. The produced sulfur discharge stream is free of sulfide, so discharge is no problem.

Biogas desulfurized with THIOPAQ retains the caloric value of biogas, as it does not dilute biogas with air, nitrogen or oxygen. You can rely on THIOPAQ as your biogas purification system, as we measure > 98% uptime among the 350+ live installations. It can be applied to a wide range of biogas streams containing H₂S and can be combined with all biological anaerobic systems. The system is proven and trusted even in the Oil & Gas industry, where high uptime is a minimum requirement.

The THIOPAQ uses a biochemical treatment to remove H₂S in (bio)gas to less than 25 ppm. It consists of an absorber column coupled to a biological reactor and H₂S filter / sulfur separation device.In the scrubber, the gas containing H₂S is brought into contact with the washing water via countercurrent exchange. Absorption of H₂S under slightly alkaline conditions enables a chemical reaction with hydroxide ions. The hydroxide used in the scrubber is then regenerated in the bioreactor via naturally-occurring bacteria that power the biological process. The sulfur produced in the system is separated in a solids separation step, and can be re-used as a high-quality, organic fertilizer.

THIOPAQ installations range from very small standard units to very large custom designs. The (bio)gas flows vary from 10 Nm³/hour to more than 50,000 Nm³/hour. Daily sulfur loads range from 10 kg/day to 50 tons/day.