Journal of Petroleum & Environmental Biotechnology

Gas plant troubleshoot hydrate problem with out of box solution

3^rd International Conference and Expo on Oil and Gas

July 13-14, 2017 Berlin, Germany

K Sabapathi and Saleh Al Jatley

KNPC, Kuwait

Posters & Accepted Abstracts: J Pet Environ Biotechnol

Abstract:

The train-4 gas plant is designed to process 0.9 Bcfd of Kuwait associated gases to produce methane, ethane, propane, butane and naphtha using GSP process. Column is flooding frequently and could not reach the desired recovery and purity. The potential causes like, leak in the re-boiler, feed by pass to column, tray design and damage were analyzed. Mole sieve driers were also evaluated. Feed quality and potential freeze of heavy component were analyzed and concluded that there is no problem in this regard. Product gas quality measured with multiple analyzer and moisture <0.050 ppmV, but flooding continued. Methanol injection helped improve the situation. Mercury guard bed outlet moisture is around 3 to 5 ppm. Hg guard bed inlet contains 1000 ppmV H2S and 1 mol% CO2 (H2S-CO2�??COS+H2O). COS can be formed in molecular sieve dehydration beds downstream due to absence of water. Hg bed alumina aids the formation of COS due to large surface area available for catalysis and basicity of the crystal structure in the alumina part of the adsorbent. Rate constant of this equation is function of temperature, when the temperature is higher during switching bed and the water peaks measured in the same time after bypassing the mercury guard water content to zero. Therefore, it was decided to shift the mercury guard bed in the upstream of the drier bed. This will call for shutdown of the plant, as interim measure it was decided to fill the vessel with sulfur impregnated carbon on temporary basis.

Biography :

Email: k.sabapathi@knpc.com