Development of a reduced mechanism for sour gas flaring

Industrial sour gas flaring is difficult to operate appropriately, especially when the gas stream contains high concentrations of sulfur compounds such as hydrogen sulfide and mercaptans. However, most of the detailed combustion mechanisms for hydrocarbons are too complicated, and the computation can be time consuming. In addition, most of the available combustion mechanisms for sulfur compounds are not tailored for sour gas flaring. A reduced combustion mechanism for sour gas will be highly desirable for practical application. In this work, a reduced combustion kinetic mechanism for sour gas combustion, namely the H&S mechanism, was created. This mechanism was validated against experimental data from the literature with proven accuracy. During mechanism analysis, it was found that the addition of H 2 S had a significant impact on the radical pool. A small amount of H 2 S leads to a fast buildup of H, OH, and O radicals and a rapid decomposition of CH 4 . The impact on ignition delay time due to an increase in H 2 S concentration by 3 vol. % was also analyzed. The impact needs to be compensated by the addition of supplementary fuel. This research will contribute to the clean combustion of sour gas, especially sour gas flares.