Activated Carbons for Syngas Desulfurization: Evaluating Approaches for Enhancing Low-Temperature H2S Oxidation Rate

Its relatively low cost and high surface area makes activated carbon an ideal adsorbent candidate for H2S removal. However, physical adsorption of H2S is not very effective; therefore, methods to facilitate reactive H2S oxidation on carbons are of interest. The performance of H2S removal of non-impregnated, impregnated, and doped activated carbon in low-temperature syngas was evaluated in fixed-bed breakthrough tests. The importance of oxygen content and relative humidity was established for reactive H2S removal. Impregnates especially improved the adsorption rate compared to non-impregnated carbons. Non-impregnated carbons could however retain a high capture capacity with sufficient contact time. In a relative performance test, the best performance was achieved by doped activated carbon, 320 mg g−1. Ammonia in syngas was found to significantly improve the adsorption rate of non-impregnated activated carbon. A small quantity of ammonia was consumed by the carbon bed, suggesting that ammonia is a reactant. Finally, to validate ammonia-enhanced desulfurization, bench-scale experiments were performed in biomass-based gasification syngas. The results show that when the ammonia concentration in syngas was in the tens of ppm range, 40–160 ppm H2S oxidation proceeded rapidly. Ammonia-enhanced oxidation allows utilization of cheaper non-impregnated activated carbons by in situ improvement of the adsorption kinetics. Ammonia enhancement is therefore established as a viable method for achieving high-capacity H2S removal with unmodified activated carbons.