Optimized flare gas recovery technology with consideration of life cycle assessment, reliability analyses, and uncertainity of parameters

Abstract

One of the most important sources of carbon dioxide emissions is gas flaring from oil wells. In addition to having an adverse effect on the environment, burning gases with a high energy value causes significant economic losses. The present work evaluated the best allocation for flare gas recovery technologies between eleven technologies considering life cycle assessment, reliability, and uncertainty analysis of some economic parameters in Iran's oil field. By choosing three objective functions, i.e., the carbon dioxide emission reduction, return payback period, and global warming by life cycle assessment analysis, the best combination of system was selected from eleven technologies using the genetic (NSGAII) algorithm and decision-making technique (TOPSIS) simultaneously. It was shown that the technology's reliability affects the best solution. Correspondingly, the integration of an enhanced oil recovery plant and a natural gas liquid at the capital investment of 120 M$ and a benefit of 263 M$ annually, with a repayment period of nine months, CO2 reduction of 1314,579 tons per year, and global warming effect of 699,820 tone CO2 equivalent was introduced as the best technology.