Outline Introduction

Significance of the project

Literature Reviews

Commonly Used Methods

My Task

Software to be Used

Expected Timelines and Milestones

Introduction A large amount of impurities such as Hydrogen Sulfide and Carbon

dioxide with other contaminants (e.g., N2, and COS) are found in Abu Dhabi gas fields such as Shah, Bab Arab, and Hail.

There has always been a steady need to keep increasing Abu Dhabi’s gas production over the years.

Health-wise, Hydrogen Sulfide is highly toxic and deadly if inhaled at even low concentrations. Carbon dioxide is nonflammable and thus decreases the heating value of the gas when present in large amounts.

Despite a wealth of experience gleaned from several decades of acid

gas removal, there is still a need for new energy-efficient process formulations to fit the challenging demands.

Significance of the project

This project is expected to fulfill long term and strategic objectives of increasing the sweet gas production for local consumption and exportation.

It would also make readily available acid gases for injection into oil wells for EOR operations.

Therefore developing efficient ways to treat highly sour gas will

significantly impact positively on the Abu Dhabi and the scientific community at large.

Literature Reviews

GASCO has been running Habshan gas sweetening units that treat gas streams with up to 10% H2S. The amine used in this unit is MDEA at 45% wt.

Recent researches have focused on investigating the mixing of different amine solvents and optimization. Most of these investigations focus on mixing 1o and 3o amines (e.g. MEA/MDEA) or 2o and 3o amines (e.g. DEA/MDEA).

The idea behind this mixing is to benefit the sweetening process from the high reactivity of the 1o and 2o amines and the low energy requirement of tertiary amines.

Literature Reviews

MDEA is used for selective H2S removal because MDEA does not react directly with CO2 unlike DEA. This is good for controlled CO2 removal, but becomes a disadvantage for complete acid gas removal.

Optimization work to study the effect of using various types of amine

and amine blends on the amine plant performance had been studied.

This was done by changing sour gas stream concentrations with respect to the concentration of various amines using simulation tools.

Process retrofit is now becoming an integral part of existing industrial processes. This is because of emerging internal and external conditions that tend to squeeze profit margins of conventional process.

Commonly Used Methods

Chemical Absorption/Chemical Solvents (e.g. MEA, MDEA, DEA.) which can meet much tighter product gas specifications and are always preferred for lower CO2 partial pressures in feed gas.

Physical Absorption /Physical Solvents (e.g. selexol, propylene carbonate, N-Methyl-2-Pyrrolidone(NMP) , Rectisol) are suitable for high pressure gas.

Membranes(also used for high pressure gas applications) is a pressure driven mass transfer process.

Mixed amines systems are being applied of recent especially when its desirable to remove as much CO2 as H2S from sour gas streams.

Chemical Absorption by Amine

Abu Dhabi existing Habshan gas plants’ scenario

Sour gasH2S ~ 7 %CO2 ~ 6 %

Sweet gasH2S ~ 20 ppm

CO2 ~ 2 %

New Challenge Highly sour gas: High H2S + CO2

My Task…

This research will basically look at;

Efficient ways of energy integration.

Mixing of different amine solvents.

Optimizing all the process operating conditions to come up with an efficient solution to deal with these effects

Software to be Used

Process simulator tool ProMax developed by Bryan Research & Engineering ( BR&E), Texas will be employed.

This simulator has a wide thermodynamic database and amine sweetening module’s flexibility.

Typical Amine Sweetening Unit

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