Dynamic Modeling, Simulation and Study of a Sulfur Burning Unit in an Industrial Sulfuric Acid Plant

Sulfuric acid is a basic chemical used intensively in many industrial processes. To produce the sulfuric acid, there are two major processes: the lead chamber process and the current contact process. The first step in the latter process consists of burning sulfur in the air to form sulfur dioxide. In this paper, modeling and simulation of an industrial sulfur burning unit are performed. For the modeling task, an adiabatic conversion reactor was used for the sulfur burner, a centrifugal pump for the liquid sulfur pump, and an air compressor for the air supply. To simulate the model, the Unisim Design R451 simulator was used. Then, the simulation results were validated using industrial data. In addition, a parametric study was performed to analyze the effects of the inputs' variations on the sulfur burner outlet. The proposed model can be used to develop a digital twin of the studied sulfur burner to perform real-time simulations and test new control and optimization strategies.