Abstract
The high versatility of supersonic separators for natural gas (NG) processing is explored in this chapter to include the recovery of thermodynamic hydrate inhibitors (THIs), such as methanol, ethanol, and monoethylene glycol (MEG). THIs are normally injected upstream in the raw natural gas feed to prevent solid gas hydrate issues during transportation to the processing platform. Thus, normally, a small fraction of all injected THIs is routinely lost in the natural gas product after the primary three-phase high-pressure separator (HPS) at the platform. Therefore, several processing alternatives are analyzed to recover such THI losses using supersonic separators (SS). It is shown that SS can accomplish THI recovery from raw NG simultaneously removing water for water dew-point adjustment (WDPA) and removing C3+ hydrocarbons for hydrocarbon dew-point adjustment (HCDPA) from the raw NG, reducing costs of THI losses and costs of gas processing. This new process—denominated SS-THI-Recovery—is disclosed in this chapter and analyzed in terms of technical feasibility.
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