Casale SA and RTI International have announced the signing of a global licensing and co-operation agreement that grants Casale the rights to be the exclusive sublicensor for RTI’s breakthrough warm gas desulphurisation process. The RTI process enables syngas from gasification units to be cleaned at elevated temperatures (250-650°C), thus reducing or even eliminating the need for substantial gas cooling and expensive heat recovery systems. This promises improved overall process efficiency and also reduces capital and operating costs of the entire gas clean-up block by as much as 50% when compared with conventional clean- up technologies.

Casale SA and RTI International have announced the signing of a global licensing and co-operation agreement that grants Casale the rights to be the exclusive sublicensor for RTI’s breakthrough warm gas desulphurisation process. The RTI process enables syngas from gasification units to be cleaned at elevated temperatures (250-650°C), thus reducing or even eliminating the need for substantial gas cooling and expensive heat recovery systems. This promises improved overall process efficiency and also reduces capital and operating costs of the entire gas clean-up block by as much as 50% when compared with conventional clean-up technologies.

The technology uses a novel transport reactor design and a unique high capacity, regenerable, attrition-resistant sorbent with excellent performance. It can achieve up to 99.9% removal of total sulphur from syngas at temperatures as high as 650°C and over a wide range of sulphur concentrations and operating pressures. The process was demonstrated on a 60 000 Nm3/h synthesis gas stream in a coal/ petcoke gasification plant at Tampa Electric’s Polk IGCC power plant in Florida, where it operated successfully for more than 3500 hours.

The integration of this technology with a downstream activated-amine carbon capture process enabled further reduction of total sulphur in the syngas to sub-ppmv concentrations (as low as 100 parts per billion).

“Casale already has a strong presence in fertiliser and methanol plants based on gasification, where we are a leader in the supply of sour gas shift and synthesis technologies,” said Ermanno Filippi, chief technology officer of Casale. “This agreement allows us to further expand our offering in these plants in the field of synthesis gas cleaning and conditioning, and to offer the warm gas desulphurisation process for IGCC and other gasification-based units.”