The production and separation of hydrogen and sulfur from thermal decomposition of hydrogen sulfide over vanadium oxide/sulfide catalysts

Thermal decomposition of hydrogen sulfide has been done in a flow system using pyrex tube reactor containing V2O5/Al2O3 catalyst (which it will change to V2S3/Al2O3). Continuous separation of sulfur and hydrogen has been done by passing the reaction products through a cold trap for recovering sulfur, and diethanolamine for the separation of unreacted hydrogen sulfide. Hydrogen production was measured against time for constant H2S feeding to the reactor. The conversion efficiency has been studied for different vanadium oxide/alumina percentages for a temperature range of 723 to 873 K. Arrhenius activation energies have been calculated for thermal decomposition of H2S for some catalytical compositions of vanadium sulfide. The maximum conversion efficiency was 70% at 873 K for 0.38 (min) resident time for 5–10 wt% V2S3/Al2O3 catalyst.