OPTIMAZITION OF SULFINOL PROCESS TO DECLINE STEAM CONSUMPTION IN FAJR JAM GAS REFINERY

The natural gas sweetening based on Physico-chemical absorption has been proposed as the energy efficient method for removing impurities such as H2S, Mercaptanes, CO2, COS etc. In the present paper sulfinol-M solvent is used in the absorption tower to simultaneously benefit from physical and chemical absorption due to respectively existence of Solfulane and diethanolamine (MDEA) in the solvent mixture. Reduction of Energy consumption is not only the imperative factor in chemical industries profitability but also is one of the controlling keys in greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. The PROMAX® simulator software V3.2 have been utilized for simulating the natural gas sweetening train of the Fajr Jam Gas Refining Company (FJGRC) in order to reduce required energy for regenerating solvent, where solitary MDEA solvent is substituted by sulfinol-M. With considering the main constraints such as solvent lean/rich acid gas loading and the sweet gas pipeline specifications, the effect of several parameters including Sulfinol flow rate, the proportion of Solfulane and MDEA (fractional weight based) in the mixture has been investigated for determining the optimum operational conditions. The sulfolane and MDEA weight fraction changed between 20% to 50% and 30% to 45% respectively. The composition of absorber tower sweet gas showed that in all studied cases the H2S content were below than 2.5 ppm and in the best case it reaches to 0.023 ppm. Moreover, the result revealed that using sulfinol-M solvent has no important effect on removing mercaptans. Also, the CO2 content was below 1300 ppm for all cases. Furthermore, in comparison with the actual case with MDEA solvent, there is about 18 ton/hr reduction in regenerator steam consumption where the amount of steam consumption for sulfinol-M in the best case (30 wt% MDEA and 40 wt% sulfolane) reaches to 17 ton/hr. in summary, using sulfinol-M solvent in FJGRC can be economically useful and cause the higher CO2 absorbing.

کلیدواژه ها:

natural gas sweetening ، sulfinol-M ، steam consumption ، removing H2S