Hydrodesulfurization Catalyst

Ammonia is one of the most vital chemicals for the industrial applications
especially for agricultural industry. The manufacture of fertilizers is by far the
most important use of ammonia in the world. It is being increasingly produced in
countries which have low cost sources of natural gas. In the process of ammonia
synthesis in petrochemical plants, in the first step, it is necessary to produce
hydrogen from natural gas. The manufacture of hydrogen involves several distinct
processes. At first, syngas from natural gas is produced using typical reforming
process and subsequently, carbon monoxide will be converted into hydrogen using
water gas shift reactors. Prior to syngas production, natural gas has to be free of
contaminations which have adverse effect on the downstream catalysts. Natural gas
typically contains different levels of sulfur compounds, in the form of hydrogen
sulfide and/or organic sulfur containing components which are highly poisonous to
the downstream catalysts and must be removed.
Hydrogen sulfide as a common contaminating compound present in the natural gas
stream, needs to be removed prior to enter into the downstream reactors. In addition,
small amount of hydrogen sulfide which was produced in HDS reactors must be
trapped and adsorbed. Sulfur removal adsorbents, based on zinc oxide would be an
excellent choice for this purpose.The pore size distribution, surface area, molybdenum surface area, pellet crush
strength and bulk density is optimized during the manufacturing process. These
Catalysts are produced in the extruded ring or three-lobe extruded shapes with high.
geometric surface area and low pressure drop.