Kinetics of heterogeneous ammonia sulfite oxidation in wet desulfurization with cobalt sulfate catalyst

In this work, the reaction kinetics between oxygen and ammonium sulfite obtained from the wet desulfurization process was investigated in a bubble reactor with cobalt sulfate as a catalyst under the condition of sulfite concentration of 0.38–1.18 mol/L, temperature of 15–40 °C, and cobalt concentration of 0.6 × 10⁻³–1.5 × 10⁻³ mol/L. The reaction order with respect to sulfite is zero and oxygen is 1.5, and cobalt is 0.5. The apparent energy of activation is 20.45 kJ/mol. The mechanism of sulfite oxidation was discussed. The experimental results are valuable for the process optimization of ammonium sulfite oxidation and industrial design in the wet ammonia desulfurization system.