Development of experimental apparatus for in situ monitoring of the high-pressure natural gas dehydration process

Development of experimental apparatus for in situ monitoring of the high-pressure natural gas dehydration process

• Autor
• Matheus Mendonça de Araújo Alves
• Co-autores
• Klebson Silva Santos , Cláudio Dariva , Juliana Faccin De Conto , Gustavo Rodrigues Borges
• Resumo

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  The presence of water in natural gas (NG) is one of the major challenges to be solved by the petrochemical industry, as it can cause problems in the NG flow and storage stages, and does not comply with the standards of the National Agency of Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels (ANP). Thus, the optimization of the NG dehydration process requires the study of materials that have a greater capacity to capture water and that withstand industrial conditions. In addition, there is a need to develop laboratory-scale experimental devices to evaluate the performance of these materials under high pressure conditions and to apply moisture monitoring techniques in NG with accurate and fast data collection. This work aimed to build an experimental device and develop a methodology to study the water capture of a model NG system through adsorption and monitor the gas moisture through a hygrometer based on a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM). The studies showed that the QCM was able to accurately analyze the moisture of gases at levels between 0.02 and 400 ppm with a response time of 30 s between each analysis, that the experimental apparatus was able to generate stable breakthrough curves that allowed calculating the water adsorptive capacity of a commercial adsorbent with an average of 249.36 mg/g at 100 bar and 50 ºC, as well as controlling all process variables such as pressure, temperature and flow.

   

• Palavras-chave
• Natural gas; humidity; monitoring; quartz crystal microbalance.
• Área Temática
• Adsorção e Energia