Welcome!

Welcome to Getting Started with Sulsim in Aspen HYSYS. For information on navigating this module,
please refer to navigation hints located above the slides. Click the Next button on the bottom right-hand
corner to begin.

Module Description:

Introduction: Sulfur recovery is performed in almost every refinery and gas plant that processes high
sulfur feeds. Regulatory policies require the stringent removal of sulfur from gas produced by these
plants. The Claus process is the most significant gas desulfurizing process, and recovers elemental sulfur
from gaseous hydrogen sulfide. After being patented in 1883, the Claus process has become the industry
standard for sulfur recovery.

Sulsim technology simulates the Claus Process from beginning to end by incorporating industry
knowledge and data. It was created by Sulfur Experts and has been used by the world’s leading energy
companies for over 25 years.

Sulsim technology has been incorporated into Aspen HYSYS, and integrated with Acid Gas Cleaning and
Tail Gas Treating in HYSYS Flowsheets. Sulsim enables HYSYS to accurately model reaction furnaces,
reactors, incinerators, and other related operations of the sulfur recovery plant. Sulsim also helps users
meet stringent environmental regulations and standards with flare gases, especially with meeting SO2
emissions limits. Sulsim allows users to optimize plant operation reliably and economically to maximize
plant profitability.

Objectives: In this module, we will show you step-by-step how to set up a Sulfur Recovery Unit sub-
flowsheet in Aspen HYSYS to help familiarize you with SRU process configuration. This process will
contain two sections: a Thermal stage and a Catalytic stage. Sulsim’s integration with Acid gas cleaning is
also considered in this module. There are three ways to optimize sulfur recovery that are supported in
Aspen HYSYS, but Air Demand Analyzer will be highlighted. Aspen HYSYS also provides a Converter
application that helps users transform their existing SRU cases into HYSYS format.

Prerequisites: Please review the prerequisites for this module. If you have not met any of the
prerequisites, you may wish to review the relevant materials before continuing.

What is Sulfur Recovery?

The Sulfur Recovery process removes elemental sulfur from gaseous hydrogen sulfide in natural gas and
from the byproduct gases derived from refining crude oil and other industrial processes. H2S can
originate in gas treatment units in refineries and natural gas plants, sour water stripping facilities, and
coal gasification and syngas plants. Since H2S is harmful to the environment, extremely flammable, and
can dissolve in petroleum products (degrading its quality), sulfur removal is a highly important process.
The most common method of removing sulfur is the Claus process. The original process uses low
temperature and can achieve 80-90% recovery. The process has evolved to multiple stages, which has
allowed recovery to be maximized up to 99%. A typical Modified-Claus SRU includes one Thermal Stage,
where free-flame oxidation of one-third of H2S to SO2 happens, followed by three or four Catalytic
Stages, where SO2 with the remaining two-thirds of H2S reacts over a catalyst, and some form of Tail
Gas Cleanup.
The Classic Two-Stage Claus Process:

In this figure, we have a typical Claus process, with one thermal stage and two catalytic stages. In the
thermal stage, the main unit operations are the Reaction Furnace and Waste Heat Exchanger; a
Condenser, Heater and Catalytic converter are required for a single Catalytic stage. After an acid gas
stream undergoes Acid Gas Cleaning or is processed by other units it enters the Reaction Furnace, the
first unit operation in the Claus Process, to begin deep sulfur removal. The final gas stream will be
transferred to Tail Gas Treatment, which typically occurs at the end of a sulfur recovery process.

Demo: Creating an SRU Subflowsheet

In this video, we will show you how to set up a simple sulfur recovery unit step by step. A Sulfur
Recovery unit consists of a thermal stage and catalytic stage. Let’s begin.

1. Launch HYSYS V9.

2. Open the case titled “–Setting Up SRU.hsc” in the folder “Examples.”
This is a preset sulfur recovery unit case, and the information provided in the Properties
environment is enough. Let’s review the settings specified in the Properties environment first.
3. Go to the Properties environment, and if you scroll down you can see there are quite a few
components in the list. When you add a Sulsim (Sulfur Recovery) property package prior to
editing a new component list, the component list will automatically include the required
components. This enables you to easily integrate your sulfur recovery simulation with other gas
processes.
4. In this case, the Sulsim property package is selected, which utilizes the property package
created by Sulphur Experts and uses the same Gibbs free energy, enthalpy, and viscosity
correlations. These parameters have been refined over years of industry experience to ensure
that they match plant performance.
5. Go to the Simulation environment.
6. In this case, we have set up the sulfur recovery unit, which acts as a normal sub-flowsheet. To
enter the sub-Flowsheet Environment, first double-click the figure. A Sub-Flowsheet Operation
window opens, and we need to click the “Sub-Flowsheet Environment” button at the bottom to
enter the environment.
7. You should see two streams, one named “Acid Gas” and the other named “Air To Furnace”,
which mimic the sulfur recovery process.
8. Now, let’s start with the Thermal Stage, which is the first step in the sulfur removal process. In
this process, H2S is partially oxidized with air in the reaction furnace at high temperature, some
H2S remains unreacted, and some SO2 is produced.
9. For the Thermal Stage, we need to add a Single Chamber Reaction Furnace unit operation to
the flowsheet from the palette on the right. The new palette contains unit operations that
originated from Sulsim and several additional HYSYS operations. The palette also contains
Combinations, which allow us to quickly add entire sections.
10. Double click the “FUR-100” unit. In Design | Connections, for Inlet Gas specify “Acid Gas”, and
for Air Stream specify “Air to Furnace”. For Outlet Gas, add a “Furnace Effluent” stream. The
unit operation should converge.
11. Go to the Worksheet tab, and click Composition. We can see that the “Acid Gas” inlet has a high
concentration of H2S.
12. Go back to the Design tab, and click the Parameters page. Here you can select a furnace model
and specify parameters for the reaction furnace. There are three types of models: Empirical
Furnace models, Thermodynamic Furnace Models, and Outlet-Known Furnace Models.

The Empirical furnace model uses proprietary empirical relationships developed by Sulphur
Experts based on hundreds of sulfur plant test results to predict the unit conversion efficiency,
and quantities of COS, CS2, H2, CO, and H2S at the outlet. All other combustibles are burned
with furnace air using an equilibrium reaction calculation.

The Thermodynamic furnace model performs an adiabatic equilibrium, free-energy

minimization calculation using the furnace feed materials and temperatures at the furnace
outlet pressure to predict the furnace outlet materials.

The Outlet-Known furnace model performs a material balance based on your specifications.
This option is used for calibration of plant data. When this model is selected, the Air
Stream does not use Free Energy Minimization (FEM).
In the Empirical Model drop-down list, there are nine specific options available for selection:
Four models are succeeded from Sulsim and five more were added for the HYSYS release.

Rich Feed acid gas(Legacy), Lean Feed acid gas, NH3 (Legacy), Oxygen (Legacy) are the most
commonly used models.

13. In this case, the “Rich acid gas” empirical model is selected by default.
Here we can review the default
Delta P,
Air Stream/Inlet Gas Molar Flow Rate Ratio,
Max. Sulfur Conversion Field,
Reaction Residuals (Mode)

We can go with the default settings and specify Delta P of ~ 0.4 psig (3 kPa ). Close this window.

14. Go to the Flowsheet/Modify ribbon, and enable Auto Attach. This can simplify the flowsheet
construction process.
15. Next, we need to add a Single Pass Waste heat exchanger to the flowsheet. First let’s click the
Furnace Effluent stream to activate it, which will be the input to the waste heat exchanger.
From the Palette, select the Single Pass Waste heat exchanger, hover over “Furnace Effluent”
until you see a plus sign, and drop the heat exchanger next to “Furnace Effluent” by clicking on
the screen. The exchanger will be connected to the furnace automatically.
16. Double click the exchanger to configure it, name the outlet streams of waste heat exchanger as
“WHE Outlet Gas”, “WHE Liquid Sulfur Outlet”, and “WHE Energy” respectively. The status bar
shows Unknown Delta T.
17. Go to the Design tab and Parameters page. Specify the outlet temperature for the exchanger as
570 F. The status bar turns green and says “OK”. Close the window. .
18. You need to remove extra streams from your flowsheet after each unit operation auto attached
and stream renamed.. Now add a “Condenser” unit operation from the Palette to the
flowsheet.
19. In the COND-100 property form, configure the COND-100 unit operation by going to the Design
tab, Connections page, and changing the stream names to COND100 Gas Outlet, COND100
Liquid Sulfur Outlet, and COND100 Energy.
20. The status bar says Unknown Delta T. To resolve this, go to the Parameters page and specify
the Outlet T as 275°F (135°C). The condenser should converge.
We have now completed setting up a typical thermal stage for a Sulfur recovery unit.
21. The next part of sulfur recovery is the Catalytic stage. A typical sulfur recovery sub-flowsheet
may contain between one and four catalytic stages composed of three steps: heating, catalytic
reaction, and cooling plus condensation. In this video we will demonstrate two catalytic stages.
Add a “Heater” unit operation to the flowsheet.
22. Double click the unit operation. In the Connections page, change the Energy and Outlet streams’
name to “E100 Energy”, “E100 Outlet”. The status bars shows Unknown Delta P. Go to the
Parameters page and specify the Delta P as 0.4351 psi. The status bar says Unknown Duty. To
resolve this, we can go to the Worksheet tab, and provide an outlet temperature for the E100
Outlet stream of 518 F. The status bar will turn green this time. Close the Heater window.
23. Let’s add a “Catalytic Converter” to the flowsheet. The Catalytic Converter is the central
component of a catalytic stage and provides sulfur conversion downstream of the reaction
furnace. There are three types in the Palette: a Catalytic Converter, a Selective Oxidation
Converter, and a Sub-Dewpoint catalytic converter.
24. The Sub-Dewpoint Catalytic Converter uses the same correlations as the Catalytic Converter
and behaves similarly, except that the Sub-Dewpoint Catalytic Converter overcomes the
reaction limit of the Catalytic Converter by allowing absorption of sulfur liquid into the catalyst,
removing it from further processing. The Sub-Dewpoint Catalytic Converter can operate at an
outlet temperature lower than the sulfur dewpoint.
25. We will add a Catalytic Converter to the flowsheet. After the converter is added, the flowsheet
converges automatically. Let’s double-click the catalytic converter, and just change the outlet
stream name to CONV100 Effluent. After this, let’s review the converter settings, by going to
Parameters. Here, we can see there are two kinds of catalyst models supplied in HYSYS:
Alumina and Titania.

Alumina is the default catalyst. It has been used for 40 years and offers well-established
performance.

The Titania catalyst model provides high levels of conversion of COS and CS2 at relatively low
reaction temperatures. The use of titania dioxide as a catalyst is more recent than the use of
alumina.

For the values in Approach to equilibrium % of table, only the H2S/SO2 reaction value must be
specified in order for the Catalytic Converter to solve. H2S/SO2 reaction value represents the
percentage approach to equilibrium, which means the extent of the H2S/SO2 (modified-Claus)
reaction in the converter. This value controls the simulation of catalyst deactivation in the unit.
 The extent of COS hydrolysis and CS2 hydrolysis in the converter is only predicted at the
converter operating temperature using empirical models when the Catalytic Converter is
solved. If not, the default value is empty.

26. Close this window, select the CONV100 Effluent stream, then add a “Condenser” from the
palette. This will auto attach this stream to the condenser.
27. Double click the Condenser. In the Design tab, specify the outlet streams from the Condenser as
“COND101 Energy”, “COND101 Gas Outlet” and “COND101 Liquid Sulfur Outlet” respectively.
The status bar is yellow and says Unknown Delta T. To resolve this, we can go to the Parameters
page, and specify the Outlet Temperature as 275 F. It should converge.
28. To summarize our progress so far, we have shown step-by-step how to set up the sulfur
recovery unit with one thermal stage and one catalytic stage. Next, we will speed up the process
by adding Combinations.

29. Add a second catalytic section to the flowsheet by navigating to the “Combinations” tab on the
palette or to the “Add Combinations” section of the Sulfur Recovery Unit ribbon.

30. This unit combination can’t be attached automatically. We can delete stream “1” of the “E-101”
heater, double click the heat exchanger, and replace this with the “COND101 Gas Outlet”
stream.

31. After the combination is connected, we need to configure each equipment to make it solve. For
the E-101 heater, the status bar shows Unkown Delta P. To configure this, go to the Parameters
page, specify a pressure drop of 0.4 psi (3 kPa). The status now says Unknown Duty, which we
can resolve by going to the Worksheet tab and specifying an outlet temperature of 430°F
(220°C). It converges this time.
32. For the second converter in the flowsheet, we can change the catalyst used to Titania catalyst.
Double click the Converter, go to Parameters in the Design tab, and choose Titania. The status
bar says, “The volume or space velocity must be specified for the Titania catalyst correlation”.
We can go to Rating page and specify a Space Velocity of 1000 hr-1.
33. In the Condenser, we can solve the Unknown Delta T issue by specifying the temperature for
stream 4 as 275°F (135°C) in the Parameters tab.
34. Now we have completed setting up a sulfur recovery unit with one thermal stage and two
catalytic conversion stages. Save it for later use.

Demo: Integration with Acid Gas Cleaning

In this video, we will show you how to connect a Sulfur Recovery Unit (SRU) template to an Acid Gas
Cleaning flowsheet.

1. Launch “HYSYS” first;

2. Navigate to “Examples” in the Resources ribbon, and click it to open Examples. All samples that
are available in this version are listed here.
3. Double click the folder “Acid Gas Cleaning”, and open the example “Acid Gas Cleaning Using
MDEA”.
 This case simulates an acid gas cleaning process, separating acid gases out of a methane and
ethane-rich feed using Methyl Diethanol Amine (MDEA) solvent.
When the case loads, we can see that the flowsheet is well set up and converged. Acid Gas is
the final product after MDEA absorption.
4. Double click Acid Gas, go to the Worksheet tab, then the Composition page, and we can see the
stream has a considerable amount of H2S. This Acid gas stream will be treated as the inlet to the
SRU for further purifying.
5. Add a sub-flowsheet for a sulfur recovery unit from the Palette to the main screen. A SRU Sub-
flowsheet Option dialog pops up, and there are three options to choose from:
Read from an Existing Template, Start with a Blank Flowsheet, and Paste Exported Objects.
Click Read an Existing Template……
This opens a dialog with available SRU cases on the computer. In the Examples folder, we have
the preset case “SRU Template.sru”. Select this case. The case will be processed to be included
in the flowsheet. This will take several seconds, and then the Sub-Flowsheet Operation window
will automatically open.
6. Attach “Acid Gas” stream to the External Stream in the dialog. “Acid Gas” will automatically
show up in the Internal Stream.
7. Enter the sub-flowsheet, and open “FUR-100”. In the Inlet Gas drop down list connect Acid Gas
to the furnace, and you will see process didn’t converge. To solve the flowsheet, double click
COND-2, and the status bar shows Unknown Delta P. Go to the Parameters page in Design tab,
and specify Delta P of 0.5 psi. The status bar turns green and says OK.
8. Close the window, and the whole flowsheet should converge.

Tail Gas Treating Section:

Tail Gas Treatment occurs at the end of a sulfur recovery process, and generally includes a Reducing Gas
Generator, Hydrogenation Bend, Cooler, Quench Tower, Absorber and Incinerator. Go through the
following interaction to get an idea about the tail gas treatment configuration.

How to Optimize Sulfur Recovery:

Aspen HSYSY provides three different optimization tools, Air Demand Analyzer, Adjust, and Case Study.
The Air Demand Analyzer controls the air flow to a single upstream Reaction Furnace. It adjusts the air
flow into a Reaction Furnace and performs iterative calculations to meet your specifications. It is
exclusively used in Sulsim optimization. The Adjust operation is designed to be extremely flexible, and it
varies the value of one adjustable stream variable to meet a required value or specification in another
stream or operation. Case Study tool lets you monitor the steady state response of key variables to
changes in your process. The Case Study utility can easily manage hundreds of independent and
dependent variables and allows you to add and re-order numerous variables simultaneously.

Demo: Optimize Sulfur Recovery-ADA

The Air Demand Analyzer controls the air flow to a single upstream Reaction Furnace. It adjusts the air
flow into a Reaction Furnace and performs iterative calculations to meet your specifications. In this
video, you will learn how to set up Air Demand Analyzer (ADA) to tune your Reaction Furnace.
We will begin by using a Sulfur Recovery Unit (SRU) case with one thermal section and two catalytic
stages, which, for the sake of time, has already been specified. The case is called Demo 1 - ADA Example
- Beginning of Demo.hsc.

1. This flowsheet is specified with a typical inlet flow rate of 1000 kgmol/h and a typical air flow to
a furnace of 2000 kgmol/hr. Double-click stream COND3-Out, go to the Sulfur Recovery page in
the Worksheet tab. In the properties list, we can see that HYSYS Sulsim calculated an air
demand of -31.77%. This negative value means the ratio of SO2 versus H2S isn’t ideal, and a
greater amount of SO2 is generated. A positive value of air demand means the amount of SO2
isn’t enough. The desired air demand is 0%.
The current sulfur recovery of your plant, which is the sum of all the sulfur content in liquid
sulfur streams, is 446.6 t/d. With this information, we decide to optimize this process using the
Air Demand Analyzer (ADA).
2. To add an Air Demand Analyzer, you can press F12 and then select Air Demand Analyzer, or
from the Model Palette, select the icon. In this case, let’s press F12, and select Air Demand
Analyzer in the Available Unit Operations, then Add. The Property dialog of ADA-1 will pop up
automatically.
3. In the Connections tab of the ADA-1 dialog, select the outlet from the last condenser (COND3-
Out) as Sample Stream.
4. Target an Air Demand of 0%

In the Target Variable drop-down list, there are six options supported in HYSYS, Air Demand
(%), H2S/SO2 Ratio, H2S Mole Fraction (Wet), H2S Mole Fraction (Dry), SO2 Mole Fraction
(Wet), SO2 Mole Fraction (Dry). A ratio of 2/1 for the H2S/SO2 Ratio equals 0% Air Demand.
Each value has a valid range.

5. From the Adjusted Reaction Furnace drop-down list, you must select the reaction furnace that
the ADA calculation will manipulate. The drop-down list contains all existing reaction furnaces in
the SRU sub-flowsheet, including Reaction Furnace and Two-Chamber Reaction Furnace type
unit operations. In this case, specify the reaction furnace (FUR-100) as Adjusted Reaction
Furnace.
6. HYSYS performs an iterative calculation in which the reaction furnace is adjusted to meet the
target value specified at the sample stream. Now, the status bar shows OK.
7. Go to the “Parameters” tab to review the iteration settings for the solver:
The default Maximum Iterations is 25, you can extend the iterations by increasing this number.
Minimum (Optional) and Maximum (Optional) are the bounds for the independent variable
(optional) in this field.
The solver should converge.
8. Navigate to the “Monitor” tab in the ADA-1 dialog to track progress and view tabular results.
Notice the solver is adjusting the air flow to meet the targeted air demand.
9. Close the window, go back to the flowsheet, and we can see an air demand of 0%, which
corresponds to an air flow rate of 1,528 kgmol/hr and 523 t/d sulfur recovery.

Demo: Performance Report

1. Open the Setting up SRU subflowsheet.hsc case in HYSYS V9.0. This is a converged sulfur
recovery subflowsheet we built. It contains one thermal stage and two catalytic stages. After the
 SRU flowsheet is solved and has been divided into different sulfur recovery trains and thermal
and catalytic stages within those trains, the performance summary shows various production
and efficiency values for the trains and stages. There are multiple ways to review the process
results. You can use the Performance Summary form.
2. One way of getting the performance report is by accessing the Performance tab on the Sub-
Flowsheet Operation Form. In this subflowsheet environment, go to the Flowsheet/Modify
ribbon, and click Go to Parent. The Sub-Flowsheet Operation Form will open. Go to
Performance tab in the main form, then choose Train FUR-100 in the trains form. Operation
efficiencies, and we can see Production status in the two tables.
3. The other way is to directly click the Performance summary Results button in the Sulfur
Recovery Unit ribbon. Go to the Sub-Flowsheet Environment by clicking the button, Sub-
Flowsheet Environment…. at the bottom of the Sub-Flowsheet Operation form. In the sub-
flowsheet environment, go to the Sulfur Recovery Unit ribbon, and click the Performance
Summary button. This will open the results for the selected subflowsheet.
4. Close the Performance Summary window. If you are interested in viewing the performance
summary for particular unit operations, you can double click the desired unit operation, and go
to the Performance tab in the unit operation properties window. Here you can find the specific
results for the desired unit operation.

Demo: Converter Application

In this video, you will learn how to quickly convert Sulsim cases into HYSYS cases using the Sulsim
Converter. The Sulsim Converter supports files with the following extensions for conversion.

Sulsim cases can be converted into HYSYS simulation case files, HYSYS compound files and Sulfur
Recovery Unit (SRU) template files.

Next, let’s go through the steps of conversion.

Let’s first launch the Sulsim converter application. Sulsim Converter is a standalone application, installed
simultaneously with Aspen HYSYS V9.0. To open it, you can directly click the standalone icon from the
application list, or you can double-click a Sulsim case with a supported extension on a machine that has
HYSYS V9 installed. Let’s open Sulsim Converter by double-clicking a Sulsim case.

Double-click Sulsim Flowsheet Reference Case 1.s70 in the Example folder, and the Sulsim Converter
form pops up. The Source column contains a list of the Sulsim files that you want to convert to HYSYS
files, and the Target column lists the HYSYS files into which each Sulsim file will be embedded or
converted. The converted HYSYS file will be given the same name and be saved in the same place as the
source file, unless modified.

On the Sulsim Converter form, click Add Conversion. The New Conversion dialog box appears.

Next to the Convert From field, click the Browse button. On the Select a Sulsim case dialog box, browse
to an existing Sulsim file, Sulsim One Acid Gas with TGCU.s60, and then click Open.

Note: You must select a file with a supported extension: .s71, .s70, .s60, or .s50.

Next to the Save to new or existing case field, click the Browse button. On the Save As dialog box, you
can specify the path for an existing HYSYS file (.hsc) or HYSYS compound file (.hscz) or navigate to the
desired folder and type the name of a new HYSYS simulation case file (.hsc), HYSYS compound file
(.hscz), or SRU template file (.sru).

Let’s select the path for an existing HSYSY file first, choose Acid Gas Cleaning Using MDEA.hsc. Then
click Save.

Next click the Add This Conversion button. The second Sulsim file appears in the Source column, and
the HYSYS file appears in the Target column. You can repeat this procedure for any additional Sulsim
cases that you want to convert.

Let’s add another conversion by clicking the Add conversion button, under Convert From, Browse to the
target Sulsim file, Sulsim Two SRU One Acid Gas.s60 file, then Open it. For Save to new or existing case,
Browse to the Examples folder, Rename the case “Test” then Save it, and Add This Conversion. Now, all
the cases that we want to convert are listed in the window. For further conversion editing, you can
select the case of interest and click the Modify icon or Delete icon.

Before running the conversion, make sure to save your HYSYS cases if they are currently open. Once the
conversion begins, unsaved changes to any currently open HYSYS cases will be lost.

The last step is to convert these Sulsim cases by pressing Convert.

The unit operations within the Sulsim cases are automatically mapped to HYSYS unit operations during
the conversion process. For details, you can refer to Flowsheet Mapping in the online help.

Caution: Due to differences in unit operation specifications and general behavior, not all Sulsim cases
can be converted to HYSYS cases as described in the table above. For further details, refer to Flowsheet
Mapping: Special Cases. To learn more about specifications and unit operations that will not be
converted in HYSYS, refer to Flowsheet Mapping Limitations.

If you are converting up to 3 or more cases, you can click the stop button to stop the conversion if
necessary.

If your files are successfully converted, the Status column shows the status of the file, highlighted in
green. The Target column lists the converted file as a link. If you click the link, the file will open in HYSYS.
You can right-click and select Open to open the converted file in HYSYS.

Note that you should not select the same .sru or HYSYS file as a Target for multiple Sulsim source files
during the same conversion. If you attempt to do so, only the first Sulsim source file is converted, and
subsequent conversions will fail.

Summary

In summary, first we reviewed the concept of sulfur recovery, and construct one classic Claus process
with one thermal stage and two catalytic stages. We connected this subflowsheet to the Acid Gas
Cleaning process and introduced the configuration of a typical tail gas treating section.

Then we presented three methods that are available in Aspen HYSYS to optimize a sulfur recovery unit
process, focusing on Air Demand Analyzer in our demonstration. In order to avoid rebuilding a sulfur
recovery case, we designed an application tool to assist customers in transforming their original .sru
case into a HSYSY case. We presented the functionality in the final demo to show how to use the
converter.

For more materials and information, you can refer to this link: