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Development of a techno-economic framework for natural gas dehydration via absorption using tri-ethylene glycol: A comparative study between DRIZO and other dehydration processes
oleh: Zong Yang Kong, Xin Jie Melvin Wee, Ahmed Mahmoud, Aimin Yu, Shaomin Liu, Jaka Sunarso
Format: | Article |
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Diterbitkan: | Elsevier 2020-01-01 |
Deskripsi
In this work, the previously developed techno-economic framework in Kong et al. (2018) is extended to evaluate three different configurations of DRIZO process for natural gas dehydration: Case (i) – recycling of the regenerator overhead, Case (ii) – recycling of the flash vapour, and Case (iii) – recycling of both the flash vapour and the regenerator overhead into the dehydration system. The best configuration of DRIZO process is Case (iii), which is used as a representative case for subsequent comparison against other dehydration processes evaluated in our previous work. Our techno-economic analysis reveals that Case (iii) can regenerate tri-ethylene glycol (TEG) with the highest purity and the lowest TEG loss rate and volatile organic compound (VOC) emission. This translates to the lower water content in the dry product gas and also the higher HHV relative to Case (i) and Case (ii). A higher HHV generally signifies a higher gross profit margin. Nevertheless, DRIZO process is not economically feasible in comparison to the other dehydration processes from our previous work, mainly because of the high capital expenditure and the associated operating cost. Relative to the other dehydration processes, although the gross profit margin for DRIZO process is about $100,000 higher, it is not sufficient to compensate the high capital and operating expenses due to the high TCOP of about $500,000 to $600,000. Therefore, our analysis recommends the use of stripping gas dehydration process that consumes a portion of dry product gas to achieve the desired water dew point specification for its highest gross profit margin. Keywords: Dehydration, Glycol regeneration, Natural gas, Tri-ethylene glycol, Aspen HYSYS, Techno-economic analysis