Abstract
Abstract This article considers a process technology based on absorption for CO2 capturing of ethane gas in phase 9 and 10 of south pars in Iran using diethanolamine (DEA) as absorbent solvent. This CO2 capture plant was designed to achieve 85% CO2 recovery and obtain 19 ppm the CO2 concentration in the outlet of absorber. ASPEN–HYSYS software was used for the dynamic simulation of a commercial-scale CO2 capture plant and amine Pkg equation was chosen from the fluid property package for calculating the thermodynamic properties of the process. A static approach for optimization was used to evaluate the optimum conditions. This research revealed that pressure variation does not have any considerable changes in the absorption process, while both amine inlet temperature and volumetric flow rate increment enhance the absorption tower efficiency. The effect of temperature was very significant as shown in the dynamic study plots. The optimum condition for CO2 absorption from a stream of ethane gas with molar flow rate of 2118 kg mol h−1 was obtained 75 m3 h−1 of amine at 53 °C and 24 bar. This optimized condition is acceptable from economical, safe as well as feasible point of view.
Highlights
The natural gas (NG) extracted from independent gas wells usually contains large percentage of methane gas, some quantity of ethane and with little quantity of other alkanes and small amount of impurities such as carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide (H2S) and etc. Mandal et al (2004) and Alie et al (2005)
The analysis revealed that this plant is able to reject various disturbances and switch between different operating points displaying prompt responses in the key controlled variables (Nittaya et al, 2014)
The results indicate that increase in the amine inlet temperature increases the outlet gas flow rate and a higher degree of CO2 removal from the ethane gas stream would be obtainable
Summary
The natural gas (NG) extracted from independent gas wells usually contains large percentage of methane gas, some quantity of ethane and with little quantity of other alkanes and small amount of impurities such as carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide (H2S) and etc. Mandal et al (2004) and Alie et al (2005). Among the non-hydrocarbon components existing in NG, CO2 and H2S may inflict severe damages on both environment and industrial equipments. These are as a result of the intrinsic properties of these substances. From economical point of view, dissolving CO2 or H2S in water contributes the production of acidic solution (Kent and Eisenberg, 1976) and corrosion problems in pipelines and related equipment would occur during transportation of NG (Bhide et al, 1998; Campbell and Morgan, 1976). H2S removal from natural gas is extremely crucial. Removal of CO2 brings about the increase in both producing heat value and transportability of natural gas (Datta and Sen, 2006). From environmental point of view, the global warming has attracted worldwide attention in the last decade and scientists have sounded alarms about the vast emissions of greenhouse gases, especially CO2, as the main cause of this issue
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