Upgrading straight refrigeration plants for NGL enhancement: A follow-up

Conference · Thu Dec 31 04:00:00 EST 1998

OSTI ID:347880

Mehra, Y R ^[1]; Bell, C J ^[2]

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1. Advanced Extraction Technologies, Inc., Houston, TX (United States)
2. Poco Petroleums Ltd., Calgary, Alberta (Canada)

For most non-US Gulf Coast natural gas processing applications, natural gas liquids are recovered in straight refrigeration plants. These plants use propane refrigerant to recover about 30%--50% of the propane, and 65%--80% of the butanes and heavier hydrocarbons. The NGL recovery levels depend upon the gas pressure and richness of the gas. With the addition of the recently patented, absorption-based Mehra Process{sup sm} NGL Recovery Unit, the propane recovery can be increased to 96+% with corresponding butanes recovery at the 99% level. With the addition of such units, refrigeration plants that are located near NGL pipelines to transport ethane-rich product can enhance their ethane production by recovering 96+% of contained ethane and benefit from the flexibility to maintain high propane recoveries (96+%) without recovering ethane when ethane is uneconomical to recover as an NGL product. Integration of the Mehra Process into an existing plant or as part of an expansion is straight forward. When part of an expansion it eliminates wastage of capital by not requiring installation of redundant equipment associated with a straight refrigeration plant. The type of equipment required by this process is common to a straight refrigeration plant. Poco Petroleums Ltd. has maximized recovery of value at two gas plants that now use the Mehra Process technology to enhance propane recoveries. This follow-up paper discusses how the Mehra Process was implemented at each plant, start-up activities, problems, and performance results for each plant.

• OSTI ID: 347880
• Report Number(s): CONF-9803159--
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

03 NATURAL GAS
ABSORPTION REFRIGERATION CYCLE
BUTANE
ETHANE
MATERIALS RECOVERY
NATURAL GAS PROCESSING PLANTS
PERFORMANCE
PROPANE
REFRIGERATING MACHINERY
RETROFITTING