H 2 S Reactive Absorption from Off‐Gas in a Spray Column: Insights from Experiments and Modeling

H 2 S removal from an off‐gas stream was performed in a spray column by H 2 S reactive absorption into a NaOH solution. The individual and interactive effects of three independent operating variables on the percentage of absorbed H 2 S were investigated: the initial pH of the scrubbing solution, the initial scrubbing solution temperature, and the volumetric liquid‐to‐gas ratio. The optimum operating variables were determined by response surface methodology (RSM) attaining a percentage of absorbed H 2 S of 98.7 ± 0.2 %. Additionally, the process performance was modeled by an artificial neural network (ANN) to predict the percentage of absorbed H 2 S. The results showed that the experimental data agreed better with the ANN model than with the RSM results.