Evaluation of MEG as alternative ofTEG for higher performance of natural gas dehydration

• Main Author: Kamarudin, Khairiyah
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS 2012
• Subjects: TP Chemical technology
• Online Access: http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/9662/1/2012%20-%20Evaluation%20of%20MEG%20as%20Alternative%20of%20TEG%20for%20Higher%20Performance%20of%20Natural%20Gas%20Dehydration.pdf; http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/9662/

Glycol dehydration is a widely used method for the removal of water from natural gas, using glycol as a solvent to absorb water from the gas stream. The presence of water will promote the occurrence of corrosion and hydrate formation along the gas pipelines. Tri-Ethylene Glycol (TEG) is commonly used as the solvent for glycol dehydration. The main environmental concern of this TEG process is the emission of benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene (BTEX) compounds to the atmosphere. This study will be using Mono-Ethylene Glycol (MEG) as the solvent, where the objectives are to compare the performance of MEG with TEG, mainly in reducing the amount of BTEX emissions. The scopes of this study are the simulation of three glycol dehydration technologies which are basic, Stahl ,and Drizo. MEG will be used as the dehydrating agent in this study, and optimization of operating conditions is done in order to have an optimized process operation of MEG. The data and results are obtained by process modeling using the Aspen Hysys simulation package. Performance of MEG is evaluated and compared with TEG. Based on our analysis we can see that the usage of MEG significantly reduced the amount of BTEX emissions without any need of equipment addition for the same glycol dehydration technology, where the amount of emission is almost zero. However, usage of MEG will result in higher amount of glycol losses. If MEG is used, it must be determined if the cost of glycol replacement is less than the cost of treating the BTEX emissions.