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A Systematic Approach in Determining Hydrate Formation in Natural Gas and Gas-to-Liquid Process Plants

Journal Name:

  • International Journal of Science and Engineering Investigations

Publication Year:

  • 2016

Key Words:

Author NameUniversity of Author
Abstract (2. Language): 
Natural gas processing plants are not immune to hydrate formation and gas plant operators are constantly on the watch for potential hydrate formation point in the process plant. In some process plant, automatic device have been design and installed to control process variables (temperature and pressure), while in others, control of process variables are done manually by switching on heaters to raise the temperature of a potential hydrate formation stream. The later can cause operation difficulty, but can be avoided during Front End Engineering Design (FEED) stage. This paper, design a systematic approach to determine hydrate formation during the design stage of the process plant. Three stages are implemented in the approach. Stages 1 and 2 are design and simulation of Natural Gas and Gas-to-Liquid (GTL) Process Flow Diagrams (PFDs) using HYSYS. Stage 3 is the utilization of two packages in the software to achieve two levels of calculations. First, the optimizer package was used to determine the optimum operating temperature of a stream that will minimize the amount of water content contained in the stream. Secondly, the hydrate formation utility package was then used to determine the temperature at which this water starts to condense out from the stream. Results obtained show that for Gas Sweetening (GS) Feed, optimum operating temperature is 32.9oC and the water content is 0.129 bbl/MMScf (723.25 Kg/MMScm). The hydrate formation temperature of this stream is 24.71oC. When the temperature was drop to 23oC, 2.9x105 KJ/h amount of heat was loss from the stream, which resulted in (1) liquid condensing from the stream, (2) hydrate formation, (3) upset of column operating conditions, and (4) heat exchanger failure. Hydrogen to Carbon monoxide ratio was 1.75:1 at the steam reformer reactor and 5.88:1 at the water gas shift reactor. Deployment of this method at the FEED stage, can minimize shutdown time due to liquid deposit, reduce operating cost and guaranty high quality of product during operation of the plant.
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REFERENCES

References: 

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