TEHRAN, May 04 (MNA) – Iranian researchers have introduced a new nano adsorbent for sour gas treatment that in addition to sweetening the gas, absorbs air pollutants.

Masoud Khaleghi, the project manager, said the aim of the study was to synthetize and introduce a new nano absorbent to effectively remove polluting gases, particularly hydrogen sulfide.

“Using this nano absorbent as a supplementing step in gas sweetening units not only reduces costs of hydrogen sulfide removal, but it will increase the efficiency of the process on the one hand, and on the other, decreases environmental pollutions caused by this dangerous gas,” he explained.

Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) is a flammable, poisonous gas which occurs naturally in crude petroleum and natural gas. The removal of H2S from sour gas is called “sweetening.”

Khaleghi went on to add, “an effective removal of H2S can partly resolve the corrosion problems in reservoirs and pipes, as well as reduce the costs related to this field.”

“In this project, we used graphene oxide and carbon nanotubes as absorbents for removing polluting gases such as nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide and sulfur oxides,” he said. “These nano absorbents due to their good properties such as chemically active sites, have performed quite well in this project.”

Findings show the efficiency of pollutant removal by this new nano absorbent has been over 99 per cent.

The results of the study have been published in Journal of Sulfur Chemistry, Volume 36, No. 6, 2015, pp. 660-671. 

 

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