Natural gas is one of the major sources of fuel and raw material to industries all over the world. However, it contains some acid gases such as CO2 and H2S which are corrosive and harmful to the environment. These acid gases must be brought to permissible limits to promote safety in the operation and increase the heating value of the natural gas. In this project, we design an acid gas removal plant based on the amine treatment process using ASPEN HYSYS software.
In our proposed design, a counter-current flow occurs between the rising sour gas and the descending methyldiethanolamine (MDEA), thereby, absorbing the acid gases. MDEA is recycled back to the absorber column, while the acid gases are separated into their respective components of CO2
The use of activated MDEA for the acid gases absorption, which encapsulates a combination of two different amines, say MDEA and DEA, is recommended for future developments of this project. The total utilities and installed cost for our proposed natural gas sweetening plants are $1,315,710 and $1,671,800 respectively.
Table of Contents
1.1. Scope and Limitation(s) 2
2. Motivation/Objective of the Study. 4
5.1. Qualitative Description of Process Equipment 11
5.1.1. Two-Phase Separator (V-100) 11
5.1.2. Absorber Column (MDEA Contactor, T-100) 12
5.1.5. Heat Exchanger (E-100) 15
5.1.8. Pump (P-100) 16
5.2.1. Reflux-Reboiler Tower 17
5.2.4. Component Splitter (X-100) 19
6. Equipment Specifications 20
9. Conclusion & Recommendation(s) 31
Appendix A: Material Balance. 34
Appendix B: Equipment Sizing. 37
Appendix C: Material Stream Properties 40
Appendix D: Stream Compositions 41
Appendix E: Absorber Column Gradients 42
Appendix F: Regenerator Column Gradients 43