Recovery of pure sulfur from residual foam at Al-Mishraq sulfur plant- Iraq by solvent extraction

At the Al-Mishraq field in the Iraqi city of Mosul, sulfur was extracted from the remaining foam using heavy naphtha as an extraction solvent. The operational circumstances during the two-hour, 90 °C digestion of the foam sample using light naphtha, heavy naphtha, and fuel jet using standard reflux and Soxhlet techniques were investigated in this work. Sulfur recovery rates with the method were 90 % with heavy naphtha, 68 % with light naphtha, and 71 % with jet fuel. The maximum reproducibility and sensitivity of the extraction procedure for foams with modest sulfur levels were shown by analyzing the remaining foam. Sulfur extracted with heavy naphtha was characterized using x-ray fluorescence (XRF) technique and a polarized optical microscope.