PRACTICA 3: Remoción de impurezas – etapa 1A

In industry, production of ethylene consists of three distinct steps –impurity removal,

separation, and reaction. Impurity removal eliminates compounds which are either harmful to
the environment or process or will not be used later. Separation divides the stream by
component so that the different fractions are sent to the proper location. The reaction step
converts the alkane inputs into alkene products. Figure 1 shows this in the form of a block
diagram. Several process method alternatives exist for each of these steps and are discussed
below.

Figure 1: Conceptual block diagram showing major chemical processes in our design

Stage 1: Impurity Removal

The process known as amine gas sweetening is used very heavily in industry due to its proven
success at being both affordable and effective. The overall objective of this stage is to remove
CO2 and H2S because they can cause severe corrosion, side reactions, and decreased
performance in columns, piping, and reactors. The natural gas without CO2 and H2S, also
known as sweet gas, is sent to Stage 2. The CO2 and H2S are stripped from the amine solution
and then separated by a distillation column. The purified H2S is sold at a discounted price to a
refinery, turning it from a costly waste to a byproduct. The amine process for the MichiChem
plant can be seen below in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Stage 1 diagram, impurity removal

Objective
The objective of Stage 1 is to remove CO2 and H2S from the raw gas feed with an amine
solution, strip the amine feed, and achieve greater than 80% purity of H2S to be sold off at
discount pricing. This will be achieved primarily through the use of an absorption tower, a
stripping tower, and a distillation column. The equipment specification in terms of flow rate
temperature and pressure can be seen in Figure 2.

Background
Amines preferentially react with CO2 and H2S, removing them from the gaseous phase and
into the liquid phase. If the CO2 and H2S are not removed prior to distillation, thermal cracking,
or distribution of IPQ gas, severe corrosion can occur as well as drastically decreased reaction
selectivity [8]. The reaction mechanism for H2S and CO2 are shown below [13]:

Amine solutions can load a certain mole amount of acid gas per mole amine seen in Figure 3
below. As can be seen, the different amines constitute different levels of loading of acid gas.
Figure 3: Overview of different amines physical and chemical characteristics [13].

Diglycolamine, DGA, was chosen for the MichiChem plant for several reasons. First it is
nonselective, removing both CO2 and H2S at the same time to optimize the gas sweetening
process. Second, DGA can operate at the lowest temperature compared to other amines, and
due to MichiChem’s location, extreme climate must be prepared for. Third, DGA has low
tendency to foam, a detrimental process that can occur in absorption and stripping towers and
causes suboptimal performance.

Amine sweetening is a process that has been in use for decades. Many plants run at similar well
gas compositions to our own. By modeling their amine process specifications, the natural gas
purity criteria can be met.

Michisite’s natural gas contains 1.2 mol% acid gas composed of nearly equal parts of hydrogen
sulfide (0.57%) and carbon dioxide (0.63%). MichiChem’s wellhead produces 5000 lb/min or
112.77 MMSCFD, containing 98 pounds of acid gas. Similarly plant B-1 data, shown in Figure
4, feeds 121 MMSCFD containing 104 pounds of acid gas at the lower bounds. By modeling
our impurity removal stage with the plant data given in Figure 1, we expect the acid gas
remaining in the stream to our separations process will contain less than 0.25 grams per 100 scf
of H2S and lower than 0.01 volume percent CO2.
Figure 4: Operating Data for aqueous DGA plants treating natural gas [8].

Literature
[8] A. Kohl and R. Nielsen, Gas Purification, 5th Ed., Houston: Gulf Publishing Company,
1997.
[13] F. Manning, Oilfield Procesing of Petroleum, Tulsa: PennWell Publishing Company, 1991.

Realizar la simulación y analizar los resultados del balance de materiales y de energía obtenidos
con el simulador de procesos, detallando además la metodología realizada para ejecutar la
simulación y el video respectivo. Presentacion: 15/12/2016 ­ 11:59:59 pm
 Natural Gas from
Wellhead
To Stage 2A 31 36.5 4744 CWS from
Stage 3, 4
100

Cooling Duty 5
101 from Stream
CWS from 202
4833 4437
Stage 3, 4
9821 37
25 31 37.5

5 E-101 35 1.7 90
Cooling Duty
6.8 from Stream E-103 2.1
201 P-100
T-100
114 6.8 4835 25 35 37.5 28 37 45
1277 99 7.1 To Stage 1B
E-100
C-100 E-102
36.5

40 To C-101,
69 and CWR
CWR 1275
102

70

V-101
1186 121 2.5 105 From Stage 1B
7.5

7.5

104

6.8 55 7.5 71 2.2 103

V-100

PS-100

100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 NOTES:
STREAM IDENTIFICATION NO. CWS = Cooling Water Supply T = Tower
CWR =Cooling Water Return PS = Phase Separator
STREAM DESCRIPTION
RFS = Refrigerant Supply F = Fan
TOTAL MASS FLOW RATE (LB/MIN) 4833 4744 1277 2.2 1275 1186 97.2 6 2.6 94.6 164 26 69 69 4835 4 2 DGA = 60% DGA, 40% Water B = Blower
COMPONENTS FORMULA Wt % Wt % Wt % Wt % Wt % Wt % Wt % Wt % Wt % Wt % Wt % Wt % Wt % Wt % Wt % Wt % Wt %
Methane CH4 44.3 45.2 0.1 44.6 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 44.3 0 0 LEGEND REVISIONS
Ethane C2H6 17.5 17.8 Trace 17.7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 17.5 0 0 REV DATE DESCRIPTION
Stream Number
Propane C3H8 16.0 16.3 Trace 16.2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 16.0 0 0 1 2/18/2013 INITIAL DESIGN
Altered Stream 112 to reboiler,
Iso-Butane C4H10 2.2 2.3 Trace 2.2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2.2 0 0
Mass Flow (lb/min)
2 2/23/2013
adjusted flash tank pressures
Adjust all temps, pressures to
N-Butane C4H10 7.0 7.2 Trace 7.2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 7.0 0 0 3 3/9/2013
match case for absorber
Adjust all temps, pressures to
Iso-Pentane C5H12 1.6 1.6 Trace 1.6 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1.6 0 0 Temperature (C) 4 3/10/2013
match case for Hex, Regenerator
Added cooling water, final weight
N-Pentane C5H12 2.4 2.4 Trace 2.4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2.4 0 0 5 3/12/2013
percents
Adjusted for pressure drop across
Hexanes C6H14 1.3 1.4 Trace 1.4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1.3 0 0 Pressure (atm) 6 4/3/2013
equipment, added heat integration

Heptanes plus C7+ 1.3 1.3 Trace 1.3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1.3 0 0

COURSE NO. DRAWN BY DATE
Nitrogen N2 4.4 4.4 Trace Trace 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4.4 0 0
University of Michigan 4/3/2013
Hydrogen Sulfide H2S 0.8 0 3.1 0 3.1 0 57.3 0 0.7 59 67.7 Trace 80 80 .8 0 0 ChE 487 MWM
DEPARTMENT OF GROUP NO. PROCESS FLOW DIAGRAM
Carbon Dioxide CO2 1.1 0 6.4 0 6.4 2.2 40 0 7.8 41 30 100 20 20 1.1 0 0 CHEMICAL ENGINEERING 5 (PFD)

Water H2O 0 0.1 36.1 5.4 36.2 39.3 0 100 91.4 0 2.6 0 0 0 0 40 100 DRAWING TITLE

DGA C4H11NO2 0 trace 54.3 0 54.4 58.5 2.6 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 60 0 Impurity Removal – Stage 1A REV. 6