From Poison to Yellow Blocks: Sour Gas, the Claus Process and Sulphur Recovery

Deep End Era. Engineering with Sankalp · Oct 28, 2026 · 1h 3m

On a winter night shift, a new process engineer smells rotten eggs near the sulphur recovery unit, and then the smell vanishes while his detector keeps reading. Episode one hundred and thirty three explains why that moment is the most dangerous in the industry, then follows hydrogen sulphide from deep carbonate reservoirs, where hydrocarbons steal oxygen from anhydrite, through the amine absorber, into a furnace that burns exactly one third of it, and over catalyst beds where the rest turns into liquid sulphur that behaves like water at one temperature and treacle at another. We trace…