Production Engineering II

Oil and Gas Production Processes

By :
Dinesh Kanesan
(dinesh.kanesan@petronas.com.my)
Tel No : 05 368 7295
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Gas Treating Systems Introduction

The gas that is separated must be compressed and treated for

sales. Compression is typically done by engine-driven
reciprocating compressors,
Usually, the separated gas is saturated with water vapor and
must be dehydrated to an acceptable level (normally less than 7
Ib/MMscf). Usually this is done in a glycol dehydrator.
In some locations it may be necessary to remove the heavier
hydrocarbons to lower the hydrocarbon dew point. Contaminants
such as H2S and CO2 may be present at levels higher than those
acceptable to the gas purchaser. If this is the case, then
additional equipment will be necessary to "sweeten" the gas.
Figure 15 is a block diagram of a production facility that is
primarily designed to handle gas wells.
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Gas Treating Systems

Gas
Treating
WELLS

Dehydrati
on

Gas
Sales

Cooling

Heating

Internal

H.P
Separati
on

Compres
sor

Stabiliza
tion

Figure 15. Gas Field Facility Block Diag

Introduction
Some well flow stream may require heating prior to
initial separation.
Choke gas expands and temperature decreases.
At low temperatures, hydrates start forming which leads
to plugging.
Typically in a gas facility, there is an initial separation at
high pressure, enabling the reservoir energy to move the
gas through the process to sales.
Depending on the number of stages, the gas flashes in
the lower pressure separator can be compressed and
combined with the gas from the high-pressure separator.
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 Purchasers require that impurities be removed from the

gas they purchase.
Consequently, contracts for the sale of gas to
transmission companies always contain provisions
regarding the quality of the gas that is delivered to them,
and periodic tests are made.
Impurities commonly found in Natural Gas which has to
be removed are :
a) Hydrogen Sulfide

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Very corrosive
Causes hydrogen embrittlement of steel
Extremely toxic at low concentration
Normal specification of 4ppm by volume

b) Carbon Dioxide
Very corrosive (forms carbonic acid with the precence of water)
Normal specification of 2-4 volume %

c) Nitrogen
No calorific value lowers the heating value of gas.
Gas purchasers may set a minimum limit of heating value
(normally approximately 950 Btu/scf)
Natural gas produced from a well is usually saturated with water
vapor.
The liquid or solid phase of water that may occur when the gas is
compressed or cooled is very troublesome.
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 Problems due to presence of water vapor :

(a)Liquid water accelerates corrosion of pipelines and other
equipment.
(b)Solid hydrates that can form when liquid water is present in
plug valves, fittings or the pipelines itself
(c) Liquid water accumulates at low points of pipeline, reducing
the capacity of the lines.

Removal of water vapor by dehydration eliminates these

possible difficulties and is normally required by gas sales
agreement.
Water vapor concentrations of 2-4 lb/MMscf are common.
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Gas Treating
This section discusses the different processes that are commonly used
in field gas treating of acid gases and method that can be used to select
from among the various processes.
Numerous processes have been developed for gas sweetening based on
a variety of chemical and physical principles.
These processes can be categorized by the principles used in the
process to separate the acid gas and the natural gases as follows:

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(a)Solid Bed Absorption

(b)Chemical Solvents
(c)Physical Solvents
(d)Direct Conversion of H2S to Sulfur
(e)Sulfide Scavenger
(f) Distillation
(g)Gas Permeation

(a) Solid Bed Absorption

A fixed bed of solid particles can be used to remove acid
gases either through chemical reactions or ionic bonding.
Typically, in solid bed absorption processes the gas stream
must flow through a fixed bed of solid particles that remove
the acid gases and hold them in the bed.
When the bed is saturated with acid gases, the vessel must
be removed from service and the bed regenerated or
replaced.
There are three commonly used processes under this
category:

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(a) Iron oxide process

(b) Zinc oxide process
(c) Molecular sieve process,

(b) Chemical Solvents

Chemical solvent processes use an aqueous solution of
a weak base to chemically react with and absorb the
acid gases in the natural gas stream.
The absorption occurs as a result of the driving force
of the partial pressure from the gas to the liquid.
The reactions involved are reversible by changing the
system temperature or pressure, or both.
The majority of chemical solvent processes use either
an amine or carbonate solution.

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(c) Physical Solvents

These processes are based on the solubility of the H2S
and CO2 within the solvent.
Various organic solvents are used to absorb the acid
gases.
Physical solvent processes have a high affinity for
heavy hydrocarbons.
If a stream is rich in C3+ hydrocarbons, the use of
physical solvent process may result in a significant loss
of heavier molecular weight hydrocarbons.
These hydrocarbons are lost because they are released
from the solvent with the acid gases and cannot be
economically recovered.

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(c) Physical Solvents [cont]

Under the following circumstances physical solvent
processes should be considered for gas sweetening:
(a)The partial pressure of the acid gases in the feed is
50 psi or higher.
(b)The concentration of heavy hydrocarbons in the feed
is low. (the gas stream is lean in propane-plus)
(c)Only bulk removal of acid gases is required.
(d)Selective H2S removal is required.
()A physical solvent process is shown in Figure 7-6
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(d) Direct Conversion of H2S to

Sulfur
The chemical and solvent processes previously discussed remove acid

gases from the gas stream but result in a release of H 2S and CO2 when
the solvent is regenerated.
The release of H2S to the atmosphere is limited by environmental
regulations.
The acid gases could be routed to an incinerator or flare (H 2S converted
to SO2)
Direct conversion processes use chemical reactions to oxidize H 2S and
produce elemental sulfur.
These processes are generally based either on the reaction of H 2S and
O2 or H2S and SO2. Both reactions yield water and elemental sulfur.
Where large flow rates are encountered, it is more common to contact
the produced gas stream with a chemical or physical solvent and use a
direct conversion process on the acid gas liberated in the regeneration
step.

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(e) Sulfide Scavengers

Sour gas sweetening may also be carried out continuously in
the flowline by continuous injection of H2S scavengers.
The most common H2S scavenger used are the aminealdehyde condensates.
Contact time between the scavenger and the sour gas is the
most critical factor in the design of the scavenger treatment
process.
The amine-aldehyde condensates process is best suited for
wet gas streams of 0.5-15 MMscfd containing less than 100
ppm H2S.
The advantages of amine aldehyde condensates are water
soluble reaction products, lower operating temperatures, low
corrosiveness to steel, and no reactivity with hydrocarbons.

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(f) Distillation
The Ryan-Holmes distillation process uses
cryogenic distillation to remove acid gases from
a gas stream.
This process is applied to remove CO2 for LPG
separation or where it is desired to produce CO2
at high pressure for reservoir injection.
This complicated process is beyond the scope of
this module.

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(g) Gas Permeation

Gas permeation is based on the mass transfer principles of
gas diffusion through a permeable membrane.
In its most basic form, a membrane separation system
consists of a vessel divided by a single flat membrane into
a high- and a low-pressure section.
Feed entering the high-pressure side selectively loses the
fast-permeating components to the low-pressure side.
The driving force for the separation is differential pressure.
CO2 tends to diffuse quickly through membranes and thus
can be removed from the bulk gas stream.
It is difficult to remove H2S to pipeline quality with a
membrane system.
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(g) Gas Permeation [cont]

Membrane systems have effectively been used as a
first step to remove the CO2 and most of the H2S. (iron
sponge or other H2S treating process is then used to
remove the remainder of the H2S)
Membranes will also remove some of the water vapor.
Depending upon the stream properties, a membrane
designed to treat CO2 to pipeline specifications may
also reduce water vapor to less than 7 Ib/MMscf.
Often, however, it is necessary to dehydrate the gas
downstream of the membrane to attain final pipeline
water vapor requirements.
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Process Selection
Each of the previous treating processes has advantages relative to the
others for certain applications; therefore, in selection of the appropriate
process, the following facts should be considered:
(a)The type of acid contaminants present in the gas stream.
(b)The concentrations of each contaminant and degree of removal desired.
(c)The volume of gas to be treated and temperature and pressure at which
the gas is available.
(d)The feasibility of recovering sulfur.
(e)The desirability of selectively removing one or more of the contaminants
without removing the others.
(f) The presence and amount of heavy hydrocarbons and aromatics in the
gas.
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Gas Dehydration
Gas dehydration is the process of removing water vapor from a gas
stream to lower the temperature at which water will condense from the
stream.
This temperature is called the "dew point" of the gas.
Dehydration to dew points below the temperature to which the gas will
be subjected will prevent hydrate formation and corrosion from
condensed water.
This chapter discusses the design of liquid glycol and solid bed
dehydration systems that are the most common methods of
dehydration used for natural gas.
In producing operations gas is most often dehydrated by contact with
triethylene glycol.
Solid bed adsorption units are used where very low dew points are
required, such as on the inlet stream to a cryogenic gas plant where
water contents of less than 0.05 Ib/MMscf may be necessary)

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Glycol Dehydration
By far the most common process for dehydrating natural
gas is to contact the gas with a hygroscopic liquid such
as one of the glycols.
This is an absorption process, where the water vapor in
the gas stream becomes dissolved in a relatively pure
glycol liquid solvent stream.
Glycol dehydration is relatively inexpensive, as the water
can be easily "boiled" out of the glycol by the addition of
heat.
This step is called "regeneration" or "reconcentration"
and enables the glycol to be recovered for reuse
inabsorbing additional water with minimal loss of glycol.
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Glycol Dehydration [cont]

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Figure 16. Typical glycol

contactor in which gas and

Figure 16 shows a typical trayed contactor in

which the gas and liquid are in counter-current
flow.
The wet gas enters the bottom of the contactor
and contacts the "richest" glycol (glycol
containing water in solution) just before the
glycol leaves the column.
The gas encounters leaner and leaner glycol (that
is, giycol containing less and less water in
solution),as it rises through the contactor.
At each successive tray the leaner glycol is able
to absorb additional amounts of water vapor from
the gas.
The counter-current flow in the contactor makes
it possible for the gas to transfer a significant
amount of water to the glycol and still approach
equilibrium with the leanest glycol concentration.

Gas Processing
The term "gas processing" is used to refer to the removing of
ethane, propane, butane, and heavier components from a gas
stream.
They may be fractionated and sold as "pure" components, or they
may be combined and sold as a natural gas liquids mix, or NGL.
The first step in a gas processing plant is to separate the
components that are to be recovered from the gas into an NGL
stream.
It may then be desirable to fractionate the NGL stream into various
liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) components of ethane, propane, isobutane, or normal-butane.
NGL is made up principally of pentanes and heavier hydrocarbons
although it may contain some butanes and very small amounts of
propane.
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Gas Processing [cont]

Gas Processing Plants are installed because it is more
economical to extract and sell the liquid products even though
this lowers the heating value of gas.
The value of the increased volume of liquids sales may be
significantly higher than the loss in gas sales revenue because
of a decrease in heating value of the gas.
Another objective of gas processing is to lower the Btu content
of the gas by extracting heavier components to meet a
maximum allowable heating limit set by a gas sales contract.
The three basic method used to separate LPG and NGL liquids
from the gas and to fractionate them into their various
components are :
a) Absorption / Lean Oil Plant
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Choice of Process
Type of Process

Absorption/Lean Oil

Refrigeration

Cryogenic Plant

Liquid Recovery

C3 80%
C4 90%
C5+ 98%

C3 85%
C4 94%
C5+ 98%

C2 > 60%
C3 > 90%
C4+ 100%

Ease of Operation

Hard to Operate

Moderate Ease

Simple to operate

Cost

Expensive

Reasonable

Expensive

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