Gas treating plant

Tennyson. R. N.. and Schaap, R. R, Guidelines Can Help Choose Proper Process for Gas-Treating Plants, Oil and Gas Journal, January 10, 1977. 

Provide requirements for specific processes. Every commercial process has unique requirements. One of the best examples that I am familiar with is the requirements outlined for an amine gas treating plant in Don Ballard s timeless article. Such advice as ... 

The use of methane, ethane, ethylene, propylene, and propane pure light hydrocarbons as refrigerants is quite common, practical, and economical for many hydrocarbon processing plants. Examples include ethylene manufacture from cracking some feedstock, ethylene or other hydrocarbon recycle purification plants, gas-treating plants, and petroleum refineries. 

Post-combustion capture using chemical absorption by aqueous alkaline amine solutions has been used for C02 and H2S removal from gas-treating plants for decades [6]. Amines react rapidly, selectively and reversibly with C02 and can be applied at low C02 partial pressure conditions. Amines are volatile, cheap and safe in handling. They show several disadvantages as they are also corrosive and require the use of resistant materials. Furthermore, amines form stable salts in the presence of O2, SOx and other impurities such as particles, HC1, HF and organic and inorganic Fig trace compounds that extremely constrain the content of those compounds in the treated gas. 

Figure 2.6. Engineering flowsheet of a gas treating plant. Note the tabulation of instrumentation flags at upper right (Fluor Engineers, by way of Rase and Barrow, Project Engineering of Process Plants, Wiley, New York, 1957).

C. Apical pieces collected from control and GA-treated plants (sprayed weekly with 100 /ig. of GA per liter) 3 weeks after beginning of treatment. 

If there is a question of losing a product such as an amine chemical, say diethanolamine, in an amine gas absorber overhead KO vessel, use this recommended 150-pm liquid particle sizing in the gas phase. I have personally witnessed hundreds of thousands of dollars of annual amine chemical losses in numerous amine gas-treating plants due to poor overhead KO drum design. Spend a few more very well justified dollars at design time and realize a payout of only a few weeks for this added expense I have witnessed 1.5 lb amine loss per million scf gas processed in an amine absorber overhead KO drum. For a 150-mmscfd gas plant absorber, 355 days per year production, at 1.20 per pound amine chemical cost, this computes to a 95,750 yearly loss. This is not a new discovery, as many an amine absorber installed in the 1950s had several trays in the tower top section dedicated to a water-wash section. I am confident that equal losses can be computed for other chemicals or petroleum products in similar fractionation overheads. 

The analysis of an acid gas stream from a gas treating plant is known to give an... 

Tennyson RN, Schaaf RP (1977) Guidelines can help choose proper process for gas treating plants. Oil Gas J 75 78-86... 

Since the conversion limit even in improved Claus plants is not readily raised above about 97%, the emphasis in emission control has now passed to using tail gas-treating plants to attain overall conversion efficiencies of 99% or more. The economics of control at Claus plants are probably more favorable than in any other case requiring control of dilute gas streams (i.e., those containing less than about 2—3% sulfur dioxide). 

Outlook to application ofMGD in natural gas processing The flux data of Figure 6 were used to estimate the membrane area that is needed to regenerate the solvent from a natural gas treating plant Aspen rate based simulations were used to derive a typical MDEA flow and rich and lean loadings as well as water evaporation in case of conventional stripper... 

Membrane permeation is particularly applicable to the removal of carbon dioxide fiom high-pressure gas. The process is based on the use of relatively small modules, and an increase in plant capacity is accomplished by simply using proportionately more modules. As a result, tbe process does not realize the economies of scale and becomes less competitive with absorption processes as tiie plant size is increased. McKee et al. (1991) compared diethanolamine (DEA) and membrane processes for a 1,(XX) psia gas-treating plant. For their base case, the amine plant was found to be generally mote economical for plant sizes greater than about 20 MMscfd. However, at very higb acid-gas concentrations (ova- about 15% carbon dioxide), a hybrid process proved to be more economical than either type alone. The hybrid process, which is not indicated in Table 1-2, uses the membrane process for bulk removal of carbon dioxide and the amine process for final cleanup. Membrane processes are described in Chapter IS. 

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