Acid gas is a particular typology of natural gas or any other gas mixture containing significant quantities of hydrogen sulfide (H2S), carbon dioxide (CO2), or similar acidic gases. A gas is determined to be acidic or not after it is mixed with water. The pH scale ranges from 0 to 14, anything above 7 is basic while anything below 7 is acidic. Water has a neutral pH of 7 so once a gas is mixed with water, if the resulting mixture has a pH of less than 7 that means it is an acidic gas; if the pH is more than 7, that means it is an alkaline gas.[1]
The term/s acid gas and sour gas are often incorrectly treated as synonyms. Strictly speaking, a sour gas is any gas that specifically contains hydrogen sulfide in significant amounts; an acid gas is any gas that contains significant amounts of acidic gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) or hydrogen sulfide. Thus, carbon dioxide by itself is an acid gas but not a sour gas.