What are the precautions to take when restarting a sulfuric acid plant after a short-term shutdown?
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What are the precautions to take when restarting a sulfuric acid plant after a short-term shutdown? What would happen if you parked for 10 hours? How can emissions be kept within limits?
I think that if parking is planned, the temperature of the sulfur combustion furnace and the conversion temperature can be increased slightly one or two hours before parking. But in the case of an emergency stop, there’s nothing that can be done. Moreover, our system uses diesel for heating; there are no preheating furnaces or electric heaters, so it’s simply impossible to do anything, unless there’s a exhaust gas recovery system available.
It’s difficult to keep exhaust emissions within limits after a 10-hour stop, but we can reduce the amount of time during which the emissions exceed the limits. Rapidly increase the temperature of the flue gas and the acid temperature.
The acid temperature can be increased rapidly, but if the flue gas temperature is raised too quickly, a high volume of air flow is required. This seems to be contradictory to the goal of reducing total emissions: with a low volume of air flow and a longer duration, the pollution per unit of time is low, while with a high volume of air flow and a shorter duration, the pollution per unit of time is high. As for the total amount of pollution, it’s hard to say, but what is the best approach?