This article is devoted to scientific and technical aspects of the direct catalytic oxidation of hydrogen sulfide for the production of elemental sulfur. It includes a detailed description of the Claus process as the main reference technology for hydrogen sulfide processing methods. An overview of modern catalytic systems for direct catalytic oxidation technology and known processes is presented. Descriptions of the scientific results of the Institute of Catalysis of the SB RAS in a study of the physical and chemical foundations of the process and the creation of a catalyst for it are included. The Boreskov Institute of Catalysis SB RAS technologies based on fundamental studies and their pilot and industrial testing results are described.

The possibility of oxidative desulfurization of dibenzothiophene dissolved in toluene as a model organosulfur compound of diesel fuel in the presence of catalytic CuZnAl compositions was studied. It was shown that the CuZnAl catalysts at 350–450°C ensure sulfur removal from the model fuel to the extent of up to 40–45%. Part of the sulfur is removed as SO₂, and some sulfur is absorbed on the catalyst surface.

The catalyst preparation route is well known to affect the copper loading and its electronic state, which influence the properties of the resulting catalyst. Electronic states of copper ions in copper-containing silicalites with the MFI-framework topology obtained by a solid-state transformation S (SST) were studied with using EPR, UV-Vis DR, XRD, H₂-TPR and chemical differentiating dissolution. They were compared with Cu-ZSM-5 and Cu-MFI (silicalite) prepared via the ion-exchange and incipient wetness impregnation. SST route was shown to provide the formation of MFI structure and favor clustering of Cu-ions near surface and subsurface of zeolite crystals. The square-planar oxide clusters of Cu²⁺-ions and the finely dispersed CuO nanoparticles with the size down to 20 nm were revealed in Cu-MFI-SST samples with low (0.5–1.0 wt.%) and high (16 wt.%) Cu-content. The CuO nanoparticles were characterized by energy band gap 1–1.16 eV. The CuO-like clusters were characterized by ligand-to-metal charge transfer band (CTB L → M) at 32,000 cm⁻¹ and contain EPR-visible surface Cu²⁺-ions. The low Cu-loaded SST-samples had poor redox properties and activity towards different solvents due to decoration of copper-species by silica; whereas CuO nanoparticles were easily removed from the catalyst by HCl. In the ion-exchanged samples over MFI-silicalite and ZSM-5, Cu²⁺-ions were mainly CuO-like clusters and isolated Cu²⁺ ions inside MFI channels. Their redox properties and tendency to dissolve in acidic solutions differed from the behavior of SST-series samples.

A brief analysis of the existing technical solutions for the purification of gases from hydrogen sulfide is carried out. The huge volume of such emissions and the lack of ready-made solutions for mini-gas processing plants and mini-refineries determine the relevance of the development of environmentally reliable, efficient and compact technologies to solve this problem. The main results of tests of technologies and installations developed at the Institute of Catalysis of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Novosibirsk) based on the direct catalytic oxidation of hydrogen sulfide are presented.

Design optimization to reduce fan impeller mass is an important and urgent task. One way to solve the problem is to design a hollow blade. In addition to lightening the blade this also reduces the fan disk load, that in turn makes it possible to minimize the weight of the disk and the weight of the impeller as a whole. The hollow blade has a complex shape, and this significantly increases development time because modification of the structure in order to define its optimal shape is a very time-consuming and costly task. Therefore, automating this process and transforming it into an optimization task is very important and relevant. In this paper, an approach to optimal hollow fan blade design in the form of an optimization problem in 3D formulation is developed. To do this, a parameterized 3D model of the hollow blade was created in the ANSYS APDL environment. Using the developed model, a comparative optimization of a typical hollow blade was carried out.