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Steps to set up a simulation in HYSYS v8.6 to model a simple dew point control system consisting of:
Gas chiller
Flash separator
Liquid stabilizer with gas recycle & compression
Product gas compression
Simple propane refrigeration loop
When the simulation is set up the overall PFD should look like the following figure.
Basis
A gas plant is processing 100 MMscfd (dry basis) to produce a spec pipeline gas as well as a pipeline
raw mix liquid product. The following are known conditions for the feedstock and specification for
the products:
The composition of the feed gas is shown in the following Component Mol%
table. N2 0.357
The gas enters the plant at 400 psia & 120F. CO2 0.194
The gas is nearly saturated with water at the inlet C1 80.980
conditions, 48 lb water per MMscf dry gas. C2 13.238
The produced pipeline gas should have a gross heating C3 3.438
value between 905 to 1050 Btu/scf & a hydrocarbon dew
1 i-C4 0.431
point no higher than 15F. n-C4 0.742
The produced pipeline gas should be delivered to the i-C5 0.199
pipeline at 1000 psia and no higher than 120F. n-C5 0.156
The produced liquids shall be exported via pipeline & n-C6 0.163
stabilized to have a TVP (true vapor pressure) @ 100F no n-C7 0.065
greater than 103 psia. n-C8 0.026
n-C9 0.010
1If the gross heating value spec cannot be achieved set the chilled separator to the lowest reasonable
temperature when using a simple propane chilling loop, -30F.
The first step is to add a set of pure chemical species to represent the gas & water phases. With
Component Lists highlighted click on the Add button. From the list of pure components pick: H2O,
Nitrogen, CO2, Methane, Ethane, Propane, i-Butane, n-Butane, i-Pentane, n-Pentane, n-Hexane,
n-Heptane, n-Octane, & n-Nonane.
It would be a good idea to save this file. Click the File tab & select Save As. Choose an appropriate
name & location.
Now we need to specify the composition. Select Composition under Worksheet in the left-hand
column. Click the Edit button to bring up a form to enter the composition of this stream. Enter the
values from the table in the Basis section as Mole Fractions. Note that these add up to approximately
For most of the unit operations well define connections & create new streams using the operations
Design form. Double-click on Mixer. Define the 2 Inlets as Dry Feed & Feed Water. Define a new
Outlet stream as Total Feed.
1A Mixer is an isenthalpic operation, so the enthalpy for Feed Water (and hence its temperature & quality)
became specified once we fully specified Total Feed.
We now want to specify the cold separator & determine the properties of the produced gas. Double-
click on DPC Separator. Specify the Inlet as Chilled Gas. Create new streams, Cold Vapor, Cold
Liquid, & Cold Water as the Vapour, Light Liquid, & Heavy Liquid, respectively.
Is this temperature for the cold separator appropriate to make spec pipeline gas? The primary
variable that we can control with the temperature is the dew point of the produced gas at the
pipeline conditions. Well look at the P-T diagram for Cold Vapor to get an indication of whether
weve come close to the dew point spec. Up in the ribbon under the Home tab, click on Stream
Analysis & choose Envelope. In the pop-up form choose Cold Vapor as the Object & click OK.
But before we modify the cold separators operation we will add the liquid stabilizer section.
Liquid Stabilization
The next step is to determine if the produced liquid will make the TVP spec of 103 psia. Double-
click on Cold Liquid & select Properties under the Worksheet heading in the left-hand column. At the
bottom of the list there is an item for True VP at 37.8 C [psia]. The value is 654.9 psia, much higher
than our spec. We can look at the composition to see the problem it has 16% methane. This is
much too high to try to have in a raw mix NGL.
Double-click on VLV-100. Specify the Inlet as Cold Liquid and define a new stream Flashed Liquid
as the Outlet.
Accept the default Once-Through reboiler configuration. This will model a kettle reboiler. Press the
Next > button to continue the towers definition.
Were able to specify temperatures on this next form. Ultimately we will want to run the reboiler in
such a way as to produce a liquid with a 103 psia vapor pressure at 100F. If we were running the
tower at 103 psia then we could set the reboiler temperature as 100F. However, since were
running the tower at a higher pressure the reboiler temperature must be higher; for now lets set an
estimate of 200F. Press the Next > button to continue the towers definition.
The tower does not run automatically because the specifications have not been fully defined. Select
Specs Summary item in the left-hand column. Notice that the default spec on the column is to
produce an overhead product rate (whose value has not been specified). But this is not how we
want to run this column. Before we enter the true spec click on the Active box for Ovhd Prod Rate to
turn it off.
Even though we have fully specified the tower the feed coming from VLV-100 has not been fully
specified, so the tower will not run. Go to the Worksheet tab and enter 200 for the pressure of
Flashed Liquid. Now that this feed is fully specified the tower will quickly calculate & converge.
Select the Active check box; now the tower becomes unconverged (because we have overspecified
the unit with both the TVP spec & the reboiler temperature spec). Select the Temperature column
specification & uncheck its Active checkbox. Now the tower will converge again, now with a reboiler
temperature of 166.9F.
Lets look at how much has been stripped out. Double-click on Recovered Gas. Select Composition
under the Worksheet tab. Notice that this gas has very high concentrations of methane & ethane. But
could this be directly produced as pipeline gas? Select Properties. Note that the HHV is too high,
1449 Btu/scf.
Note that some of the items have been flipped on the PFD shown above. This was done by selecting
the item on the Flowsheet, selecting Flowsheet/Modify in the ribbon, & then selecting Flip
Horizontal.
Double-click Recycle Gas Compressor. Set the Inlet as the Recovered Gas stream. Create an Outlet
stream HP Recycle Gas & a work Energy stream W-Recycle Compressor. Select the Worksheet tab.
Set the outlet pressure of the HP Recycle Gas to 400 psia. Note the calculations are completed using
the default adiabatic efficiency, 75%, and gives an outlet temperature of 225F.
Double-click on RCY-1. Select HP Recycle Gas as the Inlet. Create a stream Recycled Gas as the
Outlet.
Double-click on the Mixer Recycle Mixer. Select Process Feed as the Outlet. For now, only select
Total Feed as the Inlet.
How has adding the recycle gas affected the final results? There is not a great deal of Recycled Gas
being mixed with the fresh feed so the composition of the Cold Vapor does not change by much. The
cricondentherm increases only slightly to 15.07F.
The produced gas also still has a higher heating value that is too high, 1176 Btu/scf. We can try to
decrease the HHV by reducing the temperature of the Chilled Gas. Lets lower this temperature to
the lowest limit reasonable for a simple propane chilling loop, -30F. Reducing this temperature
does shift more of the heavy ends out of the produced gas & the HHV is lower. However, the HHV of
Chilled Gas is still too high, 1145 Btu/scf. Unfortunately this is pretty much the best we can do when
using a chilled single-stage flash separation unit.
Return to the Properties section. Select Component List -1 to view the active component list. Use the
search term glycol. Select EGlycol from the databank list & press Add. The component EGlycol will
be placed at the bottom of the list.
1 Engineering and Operating Guide for DOWTHERM SR-1 and DOWTHERM 4000 Inhibited Ethylene Glycol-based
Heat Transfer Fluids, Dow Chemical technical publication,
http://msdssearch.dow.com/PublishedLiteratureDOWCOM/dh_010e/0901b8038010e413.pdf?filepath=/hea
ttrans/pdfs/noreg/180-01190.pdf&fromPage=GetDoc
Lets create the streams for the refrigeration loop starting at the Chiller. Double-click on Chiller.
Create new inlet & outlet streams Refrig Liquid & Refrig Vapor, respectively. Make sure that these
streams are associated with the Cold side. Specify a zero pressure drop. Under the Worksheet tab
specify the conditions for the outlet stream Refrig Vapor (1 vapor fraction & -40F).
Double-click on C3 Condenser. Select HP Vapor as the Inlet & Condensed Liquid as the Outlet;
create Q-C3 Condenser as the Energy stream. Under Parameters set the Delta P as 0. Now the
refrigeration loop calculations are completed.
Double-click on Product Gas Compressor. Select Cold Vapor as the Inlet & create HP Product Gas
as the Outlet; create W-Product Compressor as the Energy stream. Select the Worksheet tab; set
the outlet pressure as 1000 psia. Note that outlet temperature is less than 120F, so a final cooler is
not needed to be able to introduce this gas into the pipeline.
Well define the reboiler as a kettle reboiler. Keep the default option of Once-through & Regular
Hysys reboiler and press Next >.
The product off the top of the column should be essentially water vapor at 1 atm, so we can set a
temperature estimate for this as 212F. Press Next > when done.
Lets define the cross exchanger that will preheat the cold water/EG feed and recover heat from the
hot stripper bottoms. Use the LNG Exchanger module to create EG Cross Exchanger (you may want
to flip the exchanger horizontally depending on how you place it on your flowsheet). Specify Cold
Wed like to start the calculations without creating a heat-based recycle loop. So, lets specify the
outlet temperature in Hot Rich EG as 200F. Now the hot side streams should be calculated.
Select Specs Summary. The only two active specs should be Reflux Ratio & Bottoms Mass Fraction.
Select Run (you may not even have to press this button). It should converge very quickly.
You can go back to the flowsheet & see that the EG Cross Exchanger operation has also converged.
We can now finish up the return of the lean EG stream. The LP Lean EG stream needs to be pumped
up to the delivery pressure & tied in to the EG feed stream. Add a pump Glycol Pump (you may
Notice that the pump outlet is 30.1F. This is notable for two reasons:
This is much lower than the initial spec that the ethylene glycol would be entering at 120F
(a typical temperature for air cooling). The EG Cross Exchanger actually allows us to get far
below this 120F temperature.
In fact, this temperature may actually be too low. Typical return temperatures will be 40 to
55F. This higher temperature cannot be directly specified in EG Cross Exchanger; as soon
as you change the spec from one on the outlet of the hot side to one on the cold side you set
up a recycle loop and this module cannot automatically solve this. But you can manually
reduce the temperature of Hot Rich EG until the temperature of LP Lean EG rises above
40F. Reducing the spec from 200F to 191F will do this.
A question for optimization can any of these streams be reduced to reduce the operating expense
for the process? Some thoughts:
Most of these values are dependent on the operating conditions of DPC Separator. This sets
the amount of gas that needs to be recompressed, the amount of light ends to the Stabilizer
that need to be stripped off, compressed, & recycled back, and the amount of water
absorbed & regenerated in EG Stripper.
The big operating cost and one that can be addressed with further design is the power
needed for the refrigeration loop. There are two ways that this could be done:
o We could try to recover the refrigeration from the cold streams from the DPC
Separator. By doing so there would be less refrigeration duty needed, reducing the
power requirement for the C3 Compressor. Also, by warming the Cold Liquid
before going to the Stabilizer the amount of reboiler duty will also be reduced.
However, note that by increasing the temperature of the gas before the Product Gas
Compressor the required power in this compressor will increase, negating the
majority of the power savings.
o We could increase the number of refrigeration stages of compression with associate
recycle of the intermediate gases from the intermediate stage economizers. It is
typical that a two-stage system can save about 20% of the power required by the
refrigeration system.