Iranian Journal of Chemical Engineering (IJChE)
Scientific Journal

CFD Simulation of Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S) Removal from Crude Oil Through an Optimized Cold Stripping Process in a Microchannel

Document Type : Regular Article

Authors

Faezeh Mohammadi 1
Ebrahim Ebrahimi 2

1 Department of Chemical Engineering, Ker. C., Islamic Azad University, Kermanshah, Iran

2 Department of Mechemical Engineering, Ker. C., Islamic Azad University, Kermanshah, Iran

https://doi.org/10.22034/ijche.2025.547421.1573
Abstract
The present study numerically investigates the removal of hydrogen sulfide (H₂S) from crude oil using natural gas as a stripping medium in a T-junction microchannel through three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. The microchannel geometry was adapted from a previously reported experimental configuration and further optimized to reduce natural gas consumption and operating temperature. The Volume of Fluid (VOF) model coupled with the SIMPLE algorithm was implemented in ANSYS Fluent to simulate the gas–liquid two-phase flow and evaluate mass transfer characteristics. Simulations were conducted for gas flow rates of 200–1200 mL/min and oil temperatures in the range of 20–40 °C. The results showed that the H₂S removal efficiency increased with crude oil temperature and gas flow rate but decreased with higher oil flow rate. The predicted efficiencies ranged between 65.7% and 77.8%, in close agreement with experimental data (maximum relative error: 5.6%). The cold-stripping configuration achieved high desulfurization performance even at low gas temperatures (about 18 °C) while reducing gas consumption by nearly one-third compared with conventional units. This study proposes validated correlations and optimized operating parameters for efficient desulfurization of sour crude oil using a microchannel-based cold stripping process.

Keywords

CFD simulation
H2S removal
cold stripping
microchannel
crude oil

Subjects

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Iranian Journal of Chemical Engineering (IJChE)
Volume 22, Issue 4
Autumn 2025
Pages 18-28

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