Hydrogen sulfide environmental concern

Geochemistry and Environmental Considerations. The geochemistry of steam-dominated geothermal resources is concerned primarily with condensable and noncondensable gases in the steam. The amounts and composition of noncondensable gases in Geysers steam vary rather widely within the steamfield as shown in Table 1. The predominant gas is carbon dioxide (qv) in all cases. The most important noncondensable gas, however, is hydrogen sulfide, because H2S can present both corrosion and environmental problems. 

Alkanolamines are used during the sweetening process in the oil and gas industry to remove toxic levels of gases such as hydrogen sulfide and carbon disulfide from raw gas condensates. Various alkanolamines such as A-methyldiethanolamine (23) and triethanolamine (25) may be utilized. They are therefore of concern as environmental contaminants of groundwater and wetland areas. Headley et al. (66)... 

Hydro-treating of the middle distillates must be accompUshed to reduce sulfur for the obvious environmental concerns as well as to eliminate downstream processing problems. Hydrogenation of sulfur compounds over cobalt-moly or nickel-moly catalyst is generally of the first-order kinetics with respect to the sulfur compounds. Thiophenic sulfur is more difflcult to hydrogenate than sulfides, disulfides, and mer-... 

The next four papers concentrate on another emission source, hydrogen sulfide from Claus units. The Claus process has been used for several years to remove hydrogen sulfide from petroleum refinery waste gases. However, current environmental concerns require a more efficient recovery of the sulfur values. Some of the new technology to improve Claus plant efficiencies is discussed in these chapters. 

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