Conventional Offshore Processing of CO2-Rich Natural Gas

Abstract

Having in mind that supersonic separator technologies for treating raw CO2-rich natural gas in offshore rigs, despite being promising, are totally unconventional and still under practical development, this chapter has the objective to put the conventional CO2-rich natural gas processing operations in perspective, so that an adequate appraisal of the new SS technologies on other chapters could be accessed having the conventional operations fairly situated on the background. This being said, this chapter briefly discusses general aspects of conventional technologies for offshore processing of CO2-rich natural gas, assessing performances of processing alternatives in terms of several numerical metrics including specific energy consumption, specific equipment footprint, equipment weight, specific methane loss, specific CO2 emissions. A recent literature review is also presented.