Modeling of a membrane system for nitrogen removal from natural gas

Removal nitrogen from natural gas is expensive processes that can cause non-economical development of fields contain high nitrogen. Natural gas reserves contain more than 4% nitrogen must to treatment. Cryogenic distillation is the only process used on a large scale in this subject. Many small gas wells are shut in for lack of suitable small-scale nitrogen separation technology. One of the useful technologies regarding separation N2/CH4 especially for small fields is pressure swing adsorption (PSA) that preferentially adsorbs nitrogen and another technology is membrane separation. Generally spiral wound modules are used in gas separation. So in this study, an approximate modeling technique for spiral wound membranes for separating binary gas is used for investigation of effects of increase membrane area and feed parameters in N2/CH4 Separation. Approximate model is derived directly from a standard fundamental model by assuming that residue flow rate is constant in the direction of permeate flow.

Keywords:

Nitrogen removal , Membrane permeation , Membrane Modeling