Typology and capacity sizes of sulfuric acid plants

Extracting data from a database of sulfuric acid plants worldwide, it’s possible to identify trends in sulfuric acid production over decades.

Data are from sulphuric on the web database slightly cleaned and modified.

With time H2SO4 plants have become larger and larger,

diameter of converter have reached ~ 20 m allowing a production of more than 3000 mtpd.

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Approx. every 30 years max. capacity of a single plant have doubled, this is much more time

than Moores law valid for semiconductor devices where the doubling time is 18 months.

But normally use time for a plant may be also 30 years and more , therefore longer than usually using electronic devices.

There are also a lot of smaller plants which are dedicated to special requirements of companies, where is no need to build a very large plant on a site.( blue points - min.capacities)

But there is also a min. capacity of ~ 50 mtpd which usually is not exceeded below,

probably for economic reasons, for cost / capacity relation will no more be economic compared to traded sulfuric acid.

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Worldwide typical there will be between 10 and 20 new plants new buildings p. year

Local distribution of sulfuric acid plants

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Where are this plants have been built ?

In the last decade large plants have been built in Australia, South East Asia and Africa,

often related with metallurgical activities but also in Africa and Middle East (fertilizer).

There are main types of plant:

-S-burning plants

-Metallurgical plants for roasting various sulfides

-wet gas sulfuric acid (WSA) plants

-acid regeneration plants

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There are also some special plants which do not fit into a scheme.

Also S-burning sulphonation plants ( eg. Ballestra ) are not included , for the destinated

product is not sulfuric acid

?#sulfuric acid,#sulfur,#SO2,#sulfur dioxide