Parametric Study for Carbon Dioxide Absorption from Natural Gas Using New Solvent

• Main Author: Ong, Yuin Yee
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Universiti Teknologi Petronas 2010
• Subjects: TP Chemical technology
• Online Access: http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/1363/1/Ong_Yuin_Yee_10480_CH00_UTP.pdf; http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/1363/

Natural gas (NG) is produced by the anaerobic decomposition of living matter, it is comes out of the ground, is very variable in composition, depending on the location. The composition of natural gas can vary widely, typical composition of natural gas are methane (CH4), ethane (C2H6), propane (C3H8), butane (C4H10), carbon dioxide (CO2), oxygen (O2), nitrogen (N2), hydrogen sulphide (H2S) and rare gases. The CO2 content in NG is getting higher and higher. In order to achieve natural gas sweetening, absorption is one of the unit operations to reduce concentration of CO2. Nowadays, there are several solvent are using to remove CO2 and H2S, such as alkanolamines, potassium carbonate and Sodium hydroxide. Alkanolamines include primary amines, secondary amines and tertiary amines. Primary amines consist of monoethanol amine (MEA) and diglycolamine (DGA), where secondary amines consist of diethanolamine (DEA) and di-isopropylamine (DIPA) and tertiary amines consist of methyl-diethanolamine (MDEA) and triethanolamine (TEA). Experimental work is one of the methods to analyze the solubility of solvent absorb high content of CO2 from natural gas. There are few type of experimental setup, which are Laboratory-Scale Absorption Unit, Pilot- Scale Absorption Unit, Industrial-Scale Absorption Unit and Atmospheric pressure system. To achieve the accuracy, calibration of each absorption unit must be set before start the experiment. This paper reports the solubility data of CO2 in the novel type of solvent, which is Stonvent and DEA in the various conditions of temperature, concentration, flowrate and CO2 partial pressure below atmospheric pressure.