Bp Alternative Energy International Limited

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Limited

Bp Technology Ventures Limited

Jonathan Alec Forsyth

Masahiro Kobayashi

Yasushi Mori

Kazumasa Ogura

Stefano Consonni

Manuele Gatti

Emanuele Martelli

Michael Edward Bailey

Federico Vigano

Badrul Huda

Yasushi Moryi

A process for separating sour shifted synthesis gas feedstock into liquid carbon dioxide, a gaseous hydrogen-containing gas and separated sulphur-containing components includes the steps of a. scrubbing the sour shifted gas elevated pressure with an alcohol solvent in a first scrubber and separately recovering an alcohol stream containing the sulphur-containing components and a sweet shifted gas; b. thereafter cooling the sweet shifted gas to a temperature and elevated pressure at which the carbon dioxide contained therein condenses and a two-phase gas-liquid mixture is formed; c. separating the two-phase mixture of stage (b) into separate liquid carbon dioxide and gaseous hydrogen-containing fractions in a fractionation unit; d. extracting residual carbon dioxide from the separated gaseous hydrogen-containing fraction by scrubbing the gaseous hydrogen-containing fraction at elevated pressure with an alcohol solvent in a second scrubber and recovering an alcohol stream containing carbon dioxide; e. feeding the alcohol stream containing carbon dioxide produced in step (d) to the first scrubber and f. warming and expanding the scrubber gaseous hydrogen-containing fraction using at least one heat exchanger to exchange heat with the mixture of step (b) and at least one turbo-expander capable of recovering mechanical work. The process described may be used in for example Integrated Gasification Combined Cycles (IGCC) where the source of fuel is coal or low grade carbon sources such as lignite, tar sands and shale oil.

Separation of gases

A process is described for separating a gas stream containing hydrogen sulfide (HS) impurities into a hydrogen (H) rich vapor stream, a carbon dioxide (CO) stream and an HS rich vapor stream in an apparatus that comprises a compression and/or cooling system comprising at least one compressor and/or heat exchanger and a gas-liquid separator vessel, and an HS recovery unit. In examples, the process comprises the steps of: (a) feeding the gas stream to the compression and/or cooling system such that carbon dioxide in the gas stream condenses to form a two-phase stream; (b) passing the two-phase stream either directly or indirectly to a gas-liquid separator vessel and withdrawing a hydrogen rich vapor stream and a liquid COstream containing dissolved HS impurities from the separator vessel; (c) passing the liquid COstream containing dissolved HS impurities to an HS recovery unit comprising an evaporator/condenser in which the COand HS are vaporized and an HS absorber in which the gaseous HS and COare separated, wherein the two phase stream passed to the separator is at a pressure of from 80 bar to 400 bar. In some applications, the pressure of the HS recovery unit is at least 30 bar. In a preferred example, residual COin the hydrogen rich vapor stream is removed in an optional step by solvent extraction in a COabsorber most preferably in a configuration where the HS and COabsorbers share the same (preferably methanol) solvent.

Separation of carbon dioxide and hydrogen

Growing community of inventors

Newbury, United Kingdom

Jonathan Alec Forsyth