Flare emission reduction utilizing solid oxide fuel cells at a natural gas processing plant

Abstract

The oil and gas sector produces a substantial volume of emissions mainly generated from flaring, which adds to the total energy loss in oil and gas plants and significantly impacts air quality. Therefore, reducing and recovering flare gas is essential since it benefits economic efficiency and environmental protection objectives. Several options have been developed for flare gas recovery. One of the promising approaches is integrating solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) into natural gas operations. The integration of SOFCs with a flare system in a natural gas processing plant that produces two billion standard cubic feet of natural gas daily reduces the emissions and generates electricity using the complimentary fuel.Moreover, by maintaining the flame’s heating value at the flare tip to ensure the plant’s safety requirement, 70% of the flare gas can be fed to SOFC as fuel. In an on-shore plant, SOFCs are fueled by 3.5 million standard cubic feet of purge gas, which will reduce the CO2 eq. per day from 263 tons to 101 tons and generates 20 MW of electricity. For the off-shore plant, the fuel for SOFCs is around 105 thousand standard cubic feet of purge gas, which reduces the CO2 eq. per day from 9 tons to 3 tons and generates 600 kW of electricity. Utilizing SOFCs in the natural gas flare system will generate extra electricity using waste gases and reduces greenhouse gas emissions.