AADZORB Technologies for Gas Treatment and Carbon Capture

In the present paper, we showcase the progress that researchers at Saudi Aramco R&D Center have made, towards demonstrating the cost-effectiveness of a technology option that targets achieving 99.99%+ sulfur recovery inside sulfur recover units (SRUs).This technology, dubbed AADZORB, comes in the form of an SRU tail gas treatment process that uses solid sorbents in two consecutive stages, the first stage for drying the tail gas stream while the second one for removal of H2S from the dehydrated tail gas stream.

In this talk, details on the journey of transforming an idea for cost-effective treatment of SRU tail gas streams (WO 2021/035081 A1) to a demonstration plant will be shared. The demonstration plant will be operational in a US refinery, using a tail gas flow of 1 MMSCFD, during the next 12 months. The discussion will focus on the results obtained during bench- and pilot-scale testing, which convinced the team that the separation capacity and selectivity, as well as hydrothermal stability of the adsorbents make AADZORB very competitive with the industry commercially proven technology.

Based on results from the pilot plant tests, AADZORB technology is expected to achieve sulfur recovery exceeding 99.9% at gas plants and refineries, along with a minimum 20% reduction in capital expenditure (CAPEX) and 30% decrease in operating costs compared to reduction-absorption process for managing 50 ppm of SO2 emissions. Furthermore, AADZORB prepares the SRUs tail gas streams for a cost-effective CO2 capture.