DuPont Clean Technologies has announced that Mosaic Fertilizer has recently started up a new sulfur melter at its New Wales, Florida, US, facility, using a MECS® DynaWave® reverse jet scrubber licensed by DuPont to remove SO₂, H₂S and sulfur particulate.

Mosaic reportedly installed the new melting facility to diversify its sulfur supply. At 1 million tpy of sulfur capacity, it is the largest such facility in the world. The melter allows the company receive, melt and filter solid, globally sourced sulfur.

Whilst the project was under development, Mosaic evaluated a number of technology options to scrub the melter system off gases. Melter off gases can contain sulfur vapour, which condenses to a fine, hydrophobic particulate. As the potential was high for conventional packed scrubbers to plug with the sulfur particulate, Mosaic selected the unique, open design of a DynaWave wet gas scrubber. Froth zone technology allows for a high level of particulate removal, while simultaneously scrubbing both SO₂ and H₂S.

Yves Herssens, global product manager for the MECS DynaWave Technology said, “We were delighted to help Mosaic control emissions with the help of our scrubbing technology. At the new melting facility, SO₂ and H₂S collected in the DynaWave scrubber are chemically oxidised to sulfates. The scrubber purge, containing both sulfates and sulfur particulate, is reused in an upstream process, making this a zero-wastewater process for Mosaic. Furthermore, the gas discharged to the stack at the site typically contains less than <1 mg/SCF (< 25 mg/Nm³) sulfur particulate and <5 ppm of SO₂ and H₂S.”

DuPont claims that its MECS DynaWave scrubbers are designed to work with a variety of reagents and handle multiple functions in one vessel. As such, the process makes it possible to quench the hot melter off gas and remove potential particulates while absorbing the acid gases from the gas stream.

The large nozzles and open vessel design of the scrubbers result in units that are virtually plug proof and able to handle any possible sulfur particulate entrainment. This results in higher on-stream time, lower maintenance and OPEX for the operator.