Oxygen is one of the main constituents of the atmosphere. It is not only present in the environment, but also a part of natural gas streams. Natural gas has a good amount of oxygen in its natural state. Oxygen is present in the coal mines, oil recovery systems and landfill vacuum systems. A majority of pipeline specifications want natural gas to contain not more than ten parts per million of oxygen. Oxygen may get introduced in the process of gas dryers.
Why Is It Important To Eliminate Oxygen From Natural Gas
When oxygen is contained in a natural gas stream, it leads to numerous problems such as increased corrosion in pipelines, the degradation of process chemicals, increase in pipelines specs that in general require 10ppm of oxygen. Traditionally, such contaminated gas streams were abandoned. But now there are systems and services that treat the contaminated natural gas streams so that they can be used without any hassle and offer efficiency and profits.
What Are The Requirements For Eliminating Oxygen From Natural Gas Streams
As we already discussed above, the presence of oxygen in the natural gas streams is very dangerous because it can corrode the pipelines and other machinery which result in increased maintenance and replacement cost. Moreover, oxygen when reacts with hydrogen sulfide, it forms sulphur and also results in the oxidation of glycol-based solvents that leads to the formation of salts that damage the purge streams.
Below are the main requirements of oxygen removal :
Expert Supervision
Oxygen removal from natural gas is a very difficult process. The problem is, there are neither enough technologies, nor the specialised services. This gets combined with the high cost of removal, the industry is yet to achieve the expertise in this subject.
British Thermal Unit (BTU) of Natural Gas
The rapidly increasing energy prices are compelling the industry to adopt the landfill gas recovery projects to actively produce BTU gas which is to be supplied via pipelines. This is becoming an attractive scheme even without any tax breaks and subsidies. No process is available that can achieve a high BTU with 900 plus BTU of heating value.
Landfill Gas Recovery
The cost and technical risk associated with landfill gas recovery are extremely high because of increased operational and maintenance costs of specialised equipment and machinery. However, the revenue generated by the energy recovery is very attractive and makes the process highly profitable. At this time, there are some companies that are providing catalyst-based systems along with a few other oxygen removal processes.
Molecular Gate
Engelhard Corporation has discovered a molecular gate process, also known as the sieve process where the sieve or molecular gate consists of small pores of the same size as that of gas molecules. This process sieves out the oxygen molecules and hence helps in purifying the natural gas. However, this is a relatively new technology that needs to be improved further. Not to mention, the cost of the molecular gate process is very high.
Chemical Products Industries Also Offers Following Services:
Hydrogen Sulfide Removal from Biogas
Contact US:
Chemical Products Industries, Inc. Address: 7649 SW 34th St, Oklahoma City, OK Phone: (800) 624-4356