Selecting the Best Amine in the Natural Gas Sweetening Process

Iran is the third producer and fourth consumer of natural gas in the world. The natural gassweetening process uses an absorber and a regenerator unit. The absorber unit sweetens the sour gasand the regenerator unit retrieves the amine. Selecting the proper solvent is a crucial subject indesigning natural gas sweetening processes. The solvent plays a crucial role in removing the H۲S andCO۲ from the sour gas, and it greatly affects the energy consumption rate of the process. Therefore, thisstudy analyzes three different amines of Diethanolamine (DEA), Mono Ethanolamine (MEA) and Methyldiethanolamine (MDEA) in the gas sweetening process. All the processes have been simulated with andwithout thermal integration. Results show the usage of MEA and DEA solvents instead of MDEA reducesthe overall solvent consumption by ۸۳%. Also, the usage of DEA instead of MEA and MDEA reducesthe process energy consumption by ۵۷% and ۸۹% respectively. Therefore, this study selects the DEAsolvent as the superior possible option because of its lower energy and discharge consumption rates.

Keywords:

Gas Sweetening , Solvent , Diethanolamine , Reducing Energy Consumption