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Economic Evaluation of NGL Recovery Process Schemes for Lean Feed

Compositions

Article  in  Chemical Engineering Research and Design · November 2017

DOI: 10.1016/j.cherd.2017.11.027

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 chemical engineering research and design 1 2 9 ( 2 0 1 8 ) 297–305

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Chemical Engineering Research and Design

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cherd

Economic evaluation of NGL recovery process

schemes for lean feed compositions

Chunhe Jin a , Youngsub Lim a,b,∗

a Department of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering, College of Engineering, Seoul National University, 1
Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu, Seoul 08826, Republic of Korea
b Research Institute of Marine Systems Engineering, Seoul National University, 1 Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu, Seoul

08826, Republic of Korea

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The economic analysis of lean feed conditions for natural gas liquids (NGL) recovery is
Received 18 July 2017 required to meet recent increases in the demand for lean gas reservoirs. This paper com-
Received in revised form 9 pares the economic performance of various NGL recovery schemes with consideration of
November 2017 the LNG HHV specification under various lean feed compositions. The ISS and IPSI schemes
Accepted 18 November 2017 are typical processes in NGL recovery, especially in the normal and rich fields, whereas HHC
Available online 26 November 2017 separator and scrub column schemes have advantages for lean feeds. All the schemes were
built by HYSYS simulation software and optimized using a genetic algorithm. The profitabil-
Keywords: ity analysis indicates that the gross profit and payout time give a similar trend compared to
Lean feed compositions the previous studies. However, the results give different outcomes when considering total
NGL recovery annualized cost (TAC), especially in terms of lean feed condition. The results show that scrub
Economic analysis column scheme shows the best economic performance compared to other schemes under
LNG specification lean feed compositions.
Higher heating value (HHV) © 2017 Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction economical way to achieve NGL separation. The industry-standard

Natural gas is a globally important energy source for which is increasing
rapidly, especially in East Asia (IGU, 2016). Lean natural gas production
has increased since 2005 with the growth in production from shale
gas reservoirs. The increase in unconventional shale gas reservoirs in
Australia, East Africa, and the U.S., and the global demand for cleaner
energy resources is expected to lead to increased exploitation of lean
gas reservoirs in the next few years (Smith and Doong, 2016; Brussol
and Gadelle, 2013).
Due to the higher value of heavier hydrocarbons as well as the
necessity of maintaining the pipeline specification for natural gas
transportation, natural gas liquids (NGL) is often extracted from the
original feed gas. Moreover, to avoid icing of heavy hydrocarbons such
as benzene, toluene and xylene isomers (BTX) during liquefaction and
plugging inside cryogenic heat exchangers are also the critical reasons
for extracting heavy hydrocarbons. Previous research and industrial
experience have shown that cryogenic processes are normally the most
Single Stage (ISS) process is a representative process and uses a turbo-
expander instead of a Joule–Thomson (JT) valve for greater cooling
(Campbell and Wilkinson, 1981). Nevertheless, this process is limited
by relatively low NGL recovery and problematic carbon dioxide freez-
ing (Lynch et al., 2002). Thus, many advanced process schemes have
been developed and introduced, such as the gas sub-cooled process
(GSP), cold residue reflux (CRR) process, and IPSI process (IPSI is also
the company name which owns the process). The heavy hydrocarbon
(HHC) separator and scrub column concepts have also been introduced
in some international conventions specific to lean natural gas feed
conditions.
The basic ISS process (Fig. 1) normally involves cooling the inlet
feed gas using a turbo expander and expansion valve. After passing
a liquid–vapor separator, the vapor portion is further expanded with a
turbo-expander, while the liquid portion is expanded to operating pres-
sure with an expansion valve before introducing to the de-methanizer
(Campbell and Wilkinson, 1981). Many previous studies have used the

∗
Corresponding author at: Department of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering, College of Engineering, Seoul National University,
1 Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu, Seoul 08826, Republic of Korea.
E-mail address: s98thesb@snu.ac.kr (Y. Lim).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cherd.2017.11.027
0263-8762/© 2017 Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
298 chemical engineering research and design 1 2 9 ( 2 0 1 8 ) 297–305

Fig. 1 – The ISS process scheme.

ISS process as a base for further development because of its simple
configuration and low CAPEX (Getu et al., 2013; Park et al., 2015; Jibril
and Idriss, 2006).
The IPSI process scheme (Fig. 2) is highly efficient and provides good
economic performance, especially in separating propane, propylene,
and heavier hydrocarbon liquids, as shown by Yao et al. (1999). Unlike
other NGL processes, IPSI focused on improving the tower stripping
section. A portion of hydrocarbon liquid is withdrawn from one of the
bottom trays and expanded and heated by inlet gas to produce a two
phase, the vapor phase is recycled to the column increasing the light
hydrocarbon component concentration and the efficiency of separation
(Yao et al., 1999). The previous research Getu et al. (2013) also main-
tained that the highest economic performance, considering both the
total capital cost and operating cost, compared with other NGL recovery
processes under eight feed compositions.
The heavy hydrocarbon (HHC) separator and scrub column con-
cepts are integrated NGL recovery process into the liquefaction unit and
could consider for lean natural gas feed NGL recovery (Krishnamurthy
and Liu, 2013). Typically, scrub column and HHC separator can be used
when the natural gas feed is lean, with low C2+ contents. These pro-
cesses have the advantage of lower capital cost than other NGL recovery
schemes, but they have the limitation of low NGL recovery efficiency.
Both scrub column and HHC separator schemes remove heavy hydro-
carbons after the pre-cooling and before the liquefaction processes
(refer to Figs. 3 and 4). Compared with the HHC separator, the scrub
column has less C1 and C2 loss because it uses a column instead of
a separator. Even though they have been introduced in U.S. patents,
publications comparing HHC separator and scrub column economic
performance with other NGL recovery processes are rare (Chen et al.,
2014; Roberts and Brostow, 2010; Brostow and Roberts, 2013).
According to the previous NGL recovery studies, conventional NGL
recovery studies that compare recovery performance or economic cost
analysis are usually based on a normal or rich feed (Getu et al., 2015;
Van Duc Long and Lee, 2013; Mehrpooya et al., 2010a,b). The ethane
recovery plant in the South Pars gas field was simulated and analyzed
with an advanced exergy analysis without economic analysis under a
rich feed condition (Mehrpooya et al., 2016). An energy efficient design
was proposed based on an analysis of retrofitting an NGL fractiona-
tion process, and it was reported that the methodology could save
considerable operating costs compared to the original case in terms
of side reboiler and heat pump hybrid systems (Long et al., 2016).
The existing NGL recovery plant in Sirri Island was energy and exergy
analyzed with five different normal and rich feed conditions, and it
was reported that an increase in methane reduced the work for com-
pressors and the cold heat exchanger showed the highest exergy loss
(Tahmasebi et al., 2015). This study also not included the economy
effect. NGL recovery was maximized using a commercial simulation
HYSYS and also assessed the de-methanizer pressure change effect
in a rich feed condition, where the study did not show the effect of
capital cost increase when maximizing NGL recovery (Abdulrahman
et al., 2015). An integrated NGL/LNG configuration was introduced
and analyzed considering capital cost, the result showed high ethane

Fig. 2 – The IPSI process scheme.

 chemical engineering research and design 1 2 9 ( 2 0 1 8 ) 297–305
Fig. 3 – The HHC separator process scheme.
Fig. 4 – The scrub column process scheme.
recovery and considerable liquefaction efficiency under a rich feed
composition (Vatani et al., 2013). Another integrated recovery plant was
optimized using several process parameters under a rich feed condi-
tion, they analyze plant performance with the object function of net
profit. (Mehrpooya et al., 2010b). A conceptual process design was pro-
posed that integrated shale gas NGL recovery and LNG re-gasification
configuration for energy saving (Wang and Xu, 2014). The study did not
present the economic performance effect when design energy saving
process as well. Halvorsen et al. (2016) demonstrated a dividing-wall
column could replace the de-ethanizer and de-propanizer columns in
a NGL recovery process, which enabled weight reduction in the float-
ing liquefied natural gas facilities. A hybrid genetic algorithm (GA)
method was used to optimize the economic problem of the turbo-
expander (ISS) recovery process (Jang et al., 2005). A distillation system
design was optimized for obtaining good energy efficient separation
of multi-component mixtures in the NGL processes (Yoo et al., 2016).
Heavy hydrocarbon recovery process of the CRR was optimized to maxi-
mize the ethane recovery at various demethanizer pressure conditions
and compared with GSP and conventional turbo expander processes
(Kherbeck and Chebbi, 2015).
As abovementioned most of the previous studies focused on a nor-
mal or rich feed condition. However, the increasing production of lean
feeds necessitates a re-evaluation of the economic performance of
NGL recovery processes based on lean feeds. In particular, the require-
ments of LNG HHV specifications in East Asia are relatively high, which
weakens the benefits of high efficiency NGL recovery processes. South
Korea and Japan, whose market share is reported to be more than 47%
299
according to the IGU report (IGU, 2016), normally have an HHV spec-
ification between 39.7 and 43.5 MJ/m3 ; a higher minimum value than
U.S. and Europe (Coyle et al., 2007). Getu et al. (2013) reported the eco-
nomic performance of various NGL recovery processes for eight feed
compositions but did not consider simpler processes like HHC sepa-
rator and scrub column concepts for lean feeds. Ghorbani et al. (2012)
used exergy pinch analysis to optimize NGL recovery plants but limited
their investigation to a normal feed. Also, their studies focused only on
recovery efficiency or economic performance without considering the
HHV specification. Park et al. (2015) included both economic evalua-
tion and HHV specification in their comparison of various patented
NGL process schemes, but considered only one normal feed condition.
In this paper we focused on four different NGL recovery processes
with lean feed conditions and evaluated their economic performance
based on their total annualized cost (TAC). We also considered the LNG
HHV specification, which is a requirement for East Asian countries,
including South Korea and Japan.
2. Process selection and description
We selected four types of NGL recovery schemes for economic
evaluation: ISS, IPSI, HHC separator, and scrub column. ISS is
a well-known process in NGL recovery that leads to a major
development in this field, from which the GSP, CRR, RSV and
IPSI schemes emerged. Hence, ISS is selected as the base
case. IPSI is chosen because it is a recently reported advanced
300 chemical engineering research and design 1 2 9 ( 2 0 1 8 ) 297–305
process with high recovery performance for NGL recovery,
which is also reported to have a good economic performance
compared to various other schemes (Getu et al., 2013). HHC
separator and scrub column schemes were selected because
they are expected to have better economic performance in
lean feed compositions. All the selected process models were
developed using the commercial software Aspen HYSYS, and
the Peng–Robinson equation of state was selected for use with
HYSYS simulation for its good ability to make predictions in
hydrocarbon mixtures (Mehrpooya et al., 2010a).
2.1. Industry single-stage process (ISS)
The ISS scheme process flow diagram is depicted in Fig. 1.
After the removal of acid gas and water, the treated feed gas
stream, which has a pressure of 60 bar and a temperature of
30 ◦ C, passes the heat exchanger (E-100) and it is cooled down
to about −33 ◦ C by gas stream 6, which is from the top product
stream of the column (T-100). Stream 1 is then flashed in the
separator (V-100) to vapor stream 2 and liquid stream 3. Vapor
stream 2 is depressurized by the turbo-expander (K-100) to
column top pressure and introduced to the column top stage,
where the energy generated by the expander is used to run the
compressor (K-101). Liquid stream 3 from the flash separator
(V-100) is expanded using a JT valve (VLV-100) to column pres-
sure and introduced to the column (T-100). The column top
product stream 6 is used to cool the feed gas stream and after
passing the heat exchanger (E-100) the temperature rises to
about 23 ◦ C. Residual gas stream 7 is compressed by the com-
pressor (K-101 and K-102) to meet the specified natural gas
pressure of about 60 bar, then cooled to the specified temper-
ature of 30 ◦ C by the heat exchanger (E-101).
The liquefaction section is not the focus of this study; we
instead focus on the economic performance of the NGL recov-
ery section. Therefore, it was assumed that the total capital
expenditure is a constant value in each scheme and does
not affect the economic evaluation of NGL recovery. The NG
stream enters the liquefaction process and its temperature
is reduced to about −160 ◦ C to produce liquefied natural gas.
Stream 10 is further expanded to about 1 bar by JT valve. After
expansion, stream 11 may contain a small portion of vapor
phase, which is separated through the end flash while the
liquid is sent to LNG storage.
2.2. Enhanced NGL recovery (IPSI)
IPSI is a recently patented NGL recovery scheme that uses
the column side streams to improve ethane recovery with-
out additional refrigeration systems. Fig. 2 shows the process
flow diagram of IPSI. The cleaned feed gas stream is divided
into stream 1 and stream 2. Stream 1 is first sent to the heat
exchanger (E-100) and cooled by residue gas stream 16 before
being mixed with stream 6 and entering the cold separator
(V-100). Stream 2 is successively cooled via heat exchangers (E-
101, E-102, E-103, and E-104) by the column side pump around
streams PA1, PA2 and PA3 then mixed into stream 8 at a tem-
perature of about −35 ◦ C. Stream 8 then moves to the separator
(V-100) and is flashed into a vapor stream and liquid stream 9.
Liquid stream 9 is expanded via JT valve to column pressure
and introduced to the column, while the flashed vapor stream
is divided into two streams, with 30% going into stream 11
and 70% to stream 12. Stream 11 is further cooled in the heat
exchanger (E-105) by the column top product stream 15 and
introduced as top feed stream 14 into column T-100. Stream
12 is expanded via turbo expander (K-101), leading to efficient
power generation for use by compressor (K-102), to a tempera-
ture at −40 ◦ C before being fed into the column. The tower top
product stream 15 is heated to 24 ◦ C by heat exchangers (E-
105 and E-100) then compressed via compressors (K-102 and
K-103) to a pressure of around 60 bar. Stream 19 is heated by
compression and must be cooled to 30 ◦ C (E-106) in order to
meet NG specifications.
The major improvement of IPSI over ISS or GSP is its
advanced utilization of the column bottom pump around
streams. The pump-around streams PA1 and PA2 from the
T-100 bottom trays were used to cool stream 5 and 4, after
that the warmed PA1 and PA2 streams were returned to the
column, respectively. These two pump-around streams not
only reduce the column (T-100) reboiler duty but also provide
refrigeration to the feed stream as they get warmer by cool-
ing streams 5 and 4. However, column pump-around streams
can also be applied in ISS and other NGL recovery schemes.
The IPSI scheme achieves its considerable enhancement by
using the PA3 stream, which is divided into stream 20 and 21
after being stripped from the T-100 bottom tray. Stream 20 is
warmed in heat exchanger E-101 after cooling feed gas stream
2 and then mixed with stream 27 before being returned to the
column bottom stage. On the other hand, stream 21 reduces its
pressure via expansion valve and heat exchange with stream 3
before entering the flash separator (V-101). The flashed liquid
stream 24, which contains heavier hydrocarbons, is pumped
and mixed with the column (T-100) bottom stream and later
becomes the NGL product. However, vapor stream 25 is com-
pressed in K-100 to the column pressure and cooled by air
cooler, then mixed with stream 28 before returning to the col-
umn bottom tray. Stream 28 can decrease the required reboiler
duty because the PA3 stream gets warmer. Additionally, the
relatively high concentration of light components in the PA3
stream means that the temperature profile inside the column
is reduced, which increases its heat integration ability (Getu
et al., 2013).
2.3. Heavy hydrocarbon (HHC) separator & scrub
column process
Unlike NGL recovery processes that are independent of the
liquefaction process, the treated feed gas in the HHC sep-
arator scheme directly enters the liquefaction process, and
NGL recovery is performed during the precooling section in
the main cryogenic heat exchanger. The HHC separator and
scrub column process flow diagrams are shown in Figs. 3 and 4.
Stream 1 is stripped from the cryogenic heat exchanger and
adjusted by E-100 exchanger to achieve optimum temperature,
before entering the V-100 flash separator. The liquid stream is
the recovered NGL stream, which contains relatively heavier
hydrocarbons. On the other hand, the remaining vapor stream
NG is reinjected to the liquefaction process to produce the LNG
product. The scrub column process is similar to the HHC sep-
arator process but is modified by the use of the column (T-100)
instead of the separator (V-100). The E-100 exchanger in the
HHC separator and Scrub column schemes is a temperature
controller for simulation purpose, to find the most econom-
ical temperature for separating NGL when optimization. In
a real plant, after finding the optimal value, it will not need
the exchanger except for plant control. The E-101 exchanger
is used for case studies to find the optimal temperature for
reducing end flash gas. In this study, we have fixed the same
temperature of outlet stream 4. Both the HHC separator and
 chemical engineering research and design 1 2 9 ( 2 0 1 8 ) 297–305 301

respectively. The compressor, turbine and pump efficiency

Table 1 – Feeds composition (mole %).
were fixed at 80%. The pressure drop between heat exchangers
Component Feed 1 Feed 2 Feed 3 Feed 4
was assumed to be 0.5 bar and 3 ◦ C of the minimum temper-
C1 92.97 91.57 91.22 90.67 ature approach was applied. The heavy hydrocarbons (C5+)
C2 4.18 5.18 5.21 5.23 concentration in the LNG product should not exceed 0.1 mol%
C3 1.23 1.5 1.68 1.98 due to the likelihood of freezing during the liquefaction pro-
iC4 0.54 0.5 0.55 0.45 cess (GPSA, 2012). The addition of ethane or propane at the
nC4 0.54 0.48 0.52 0.65
end of liquefaction to meet the HHV specification is not desir-
iC5 0.04 0.15 0.16 0.25
nC5 0.04 0.1 0.11 0.23
able for economic and technical reasons (Coyle et al., 2007).
C6 0.03 0.01 0.01 0.02 Therefore, it is preferred to adjust the HHV in the NGL recovery
C7 0 0.01 0.01 0.03 process. The HHV of LNG product was specified to be mini-
C8 0 0 0 0.02 mum value of 40.50 MJ/m3 (Park et al., 2015).
C9 0 0 0 0.01
C10+ 0 0 0 0.01
N2 0.43 0.5 0.53 0.45 4. Economic analysis
CO2 0 0 0 0
GPM value 1.84 2.2 2.3 2.5
4.1. Capital cost estimation

Table 2 – Common process key parameters and The major equipment of a distillation column, including the
constraints. separator, plate-fin type heat exchanger, shell and tube heat
LNG products 2 MTPA exchanger, compressor, turbine and pump were considered in
Plant inlet gas pressure 60 bar the cost estimation. The sizing of each equipment is required
Plant inlet gas temperature 30 ◦ C
to estimate capital cost, and some parameters were obtained
Compressor/turbine/pump efficiency 80%
from HYSYS simulation results.
Pressure drop across the heat exchanger 0.5 bar
Heat exchangers minimum temperature 3 ◦C Column sizing requires the diameter and height to be cal-
approach culated. Eq. (1) was introduced by Towler and Sinnott (2012)
HHV (LNG) min. 40.50 MJ/m3 for calculation the column diameter and is based on the
C4 (LNG) 2 mol% max. well-known Souders and Brown equation, which gives the
C5+ (LNG) 0.1 mol% max. maximum vapor velocity and the column diameter.
Property fluid package Peng Robinson

scrub column schemes are advantageous when the feed gas is
lean because the complex recovery processes of ISS and IPSI
are rendered inefficient by the low amount of heavy hydro-
carbon contents. Furthermore, the HHC separator and scrub
column concepts can reduce capital cost.
3. Feed compositions and specifications
Feed composition is a crucial factor in selecting an NGL recov-
ery scheme (Getu et al., 2013). Feed composition can also vary
over time. Four lean feeds with GPM values lower than 2.5 were
selected to cover the wide range of available lean feed compo-
sitions, as shown in Table 1. The GPM is defined as the amount
of recoverable liquid, expressed in gallons per 1000 standard
cubic feet of gas at 60 ◦ F. A feed is termed lean when the GPM
value is lower than 2.5, between the GPM value of 2.5–5 called
normal rich and the value higher than 5 considered as very rich
feed (Manning and Thompson, 1991). Additionally, the tradi-
tional NGL recovery process is carried out after the AGRU (acid
gas removal unit) and dehydration processes. Therefore, the
feed compositions shown in Table 1 do not include acid gas
and water components.
It is important to specify the key process parameters, which
have a major effect on plant performance, to compare the
different NGL schemes. Thus, these parameters are fixed to
certain values and conditions for faring comparisons (Getu
et al., 2013). The specified key process parameters are shown
in Table 2. The LNG specifications in Table 2 we referenced
from GPSA (2012) and previous study conducted by Park et al.
(2015). The LNG production rate was fixed at 2MTPA (mil-
lion ton per annum) for each scheme. The feed flow rate was
adjusted to satisfy the constant production rate, and the inlet
feed pressure and temperature were kept at 60 bar, and 30 ◦ C,

   L − v 0.5 4Vw
uv = −0.17lt 2 + 0.27lt − 0.047 , Dc =
v v uv
(1)
where uv and lt denote the maximum allowable vapor veloc-
ity and plate spacing (range 0.5–1.5), respectively. Vw is the
maximum vapor rate which can be obtained easily from the
simulation. The distillation column height is calculated based
on HETP (height equivalent to theoretical plate) and a HETP of
0.85 m was used here (Towler and Sinnott, 2012). The separator
diameter calculation uses the gas flow rate Eq. (2), which uses
the droplet settling velocity (Manning and Thompson, 1995).
 0.5
P Ts 1 l − g
qs = 67824Ks d2 (1 − M) (2)
Ps T Z g
where qs and Ks stand for gas flow rate and sizing parameter,
respectively. The sizing parameter can be obtained either from
the API recommendation or from the droplet-settling equa-
tion, where we use a constant value of 0.1 in this study. The
overall heat transfer coefficient (U value) of 454.24 W/m2 ◦ C is
used to calculate the heat exchange area of a heat exchanger
(Arnold and Stewart, 2012). The compressor, turbine and
pump cost rely on the power consumption of each piece of
equipment, and the power duty is easily calculated from the
simulation.
The Engineering Sciences Data Unit (ESDU) provides the
costing method for multi-stream plate-fin-type heat exchang-
ers, and ESDU 97006 was introduced for the selection and
costing of plate-fin type heat exchangers (ESDU, 2003). The
total exchanger volume should be obtained to calculate the
302 chemical engineering research and design 1 2 9 ( 2 0 1 8 ) 297–305
Table 3 – Equipment cost data parameters.
Equipment type Description
Compressors Centrifugal, reciprocating
Turbines Axial gas turbines
Heat exchangers U-tube
Process vessels Vertical
Pumps Reciprocating
Towers Tray and packed
cost of the exchanger. First, a mean volumetric coefficient Bz
is obtained from Eq. (3).
· ·
Qz Q n
i
= (3)
Bz ˇi
i=1
. precooling of NGL flow, for fair comparison of total operating
where Qz is the heat transferred in the zone,.
n is the total
number of streams involved in the zone, Qi and ˇi denote the
amount of heat transferred to the ith stream in the zone and
the volumetric film coefficient at ith stream, respectively. Next,
the heat exchanger volume is calculated from Eq. (4).
. with the electricity cost of 0.1$/kWh, we could obtain the oper-
Qz /Tm,z
Vz = (4)
Bz
where Tm,z is the logarithmic mean temperature in the zone.
Finally, the total active volume of the exchanger is calculated
by summing the volumes for each zone with an allowance of
15% for headers and distributers.
After sizing the major equipment, the purchase cost is esti-
mated by using the below cost Eq. (5), which is commonly
applied in the preliminary design stage (Turton et al., 2012).
2
log10 C0p = K1 + K2 log10 (A) + K3 [log10 (A)] (5)
where C0p is the equipment purchase cost. A is the capacity or
size parameter for equipment. For compressors, turbines and
pumps it represents power consumption. For heat exchang-
ers and vessels it represents area and volume, respectively.
The correlation parameter data for K1, K2, K3 used in the each
equipment as below Table 3 which is taken from Turton et al.
(2012).
The total capital cost (TCC) can then be obtained by multi-
plying the Lang factor (this study used factor of 4.74 which was
suggested for fluid processing plant) by the major equipment
purchase costs, as well as considering the time value, which
is based on the current chemical engineering plant and cost
index (CEPCI) (Peters et al., 2002).
4.2. Operating cost estimation
Calculating the operating cost is not easy, and it mainly relies
on energy costs which are may vary with area by area and year
by year. In addition, utility costs like electricity are the main
utilities and directly influenced by the cost of fuel (Getu et al.,
2013). The cost of utilities, such as electricity and refrigera-
tion, and the feed raw material cost are the main operating
costs considered in this research. The raw material cost in
here represents the cost of feed natural gas. The steam cost is
ignored in this study because the column operating in similar
conditions, and accordingly reboiler temperature and column
bottom NGL mass flow are also no big difference with all the
candidate four schemes which result less effect in total oper-
ating cost. Electricity is mainly consumed by the compressor,
K1 K2 K3 Capacity, units
2.2897 1.3604 −0.1027 Power, KW
2.7051 1.4398 −0.1776 Power, KW
4.1884 −0.2503 0.1974 Area, m2
3.4974 0.4485 0.1074 Volume, m3
3.8696 0.3161 0.122 Power, KW
3.4974 0.4485 0.1074 Volume, m3
turbine, and pump, and the reference unit price of electric-
ity and the natural gas cost were obtained from the EIA (U.S.
Energy Information Administration) recent three years price
for reference.
Unlike ISS and IPSI, the HHC separator and Scrub column
schemes should include additional refrigeration cost, extra
cost because they get precooling refrigeration from integrated
liquefaction system. The refrigeration cost is calculated by
applying the liquefaction efficiency reported from previous
references (Barclay and Shukri, 2000; Lim et al., 2014). The
liquefaction efficiency in this study assumes 14 kW/t/day and
ating cost 33.6$/t. Then multiply NGL mass flow rate for getting
additional refrigeration cost for HHC separator and Scrub col-
umn schemes. In this study, we focused on NGL recovery part
and neglect the heat exchanger cost effect of liquefaction cycle
because the recovered NGL mass flow is very small compared
to LNG production (about 1.5% of LNG production) under the
lean feed compositions. Thus, we ignore the increasing size of
cryogenic heat exchanger in liquefaction part.
4.3. Profitability analysis
The profitability analysis is made for each scheme for com-
paring net profit and payout time. The net profit is obtained by
gross profit minus tax (the tax rate assumed 30% in this study).
The gross profit is calculated by products revenue minus oper-
ating cost (Peters et al., 2002). The payout time, also called
payback time in some research, is evaluated and compared to
each process. Payout time is the total capital cost divided to
the net profit which is expressed as Eq. (6) (Biegler et al., 1997).
Total capital cost
Payout time = (6)
Net profit
4.4. Total annualized cost (TAC) optimization
The annualized total capital cost (TCC) is expressed on an
annual basis by assuming an interest rate of 5% over 10 years
for the economic evaluation. In this study, we considered the
TAC to be an object function of optimization. Here, the TAC
is defined as the sum of annualized TCC and, total operating
cost minus byproduct credits as shown in Eq. (7).
TAC = Annualized TCC + Total operating cost − Byproduct credits
(7)
In which the byproducts credits include each component
of the NGL (C2+ ) cost.
The genetic algorithm was used by linking Matlab with
HYSYS optimization to find the minimum TAC. The GA
method has been used in some previous studies, and its appli-
cations have been tested (Mehrpooya et al., 2006). GA is an
 chemical engineering research and design 1 2 9 ( 2 0 1 8 ) 297–305
Table 4 – Optimization variables by each scheme.
Optimization variables
ISS T1 , P4
IPSI F1 , F11 , F21 , T7 , T3 , T4 , T5 , T6 ,
T14 , P14
HHC separator T2
Scrub column T2
intelligent random search algorithms based on the mechan-
ics of natural evolution, it utilizes historical information and
finally could yield a global optimum by repeating a series of
population selection and generation for complex optimiza-
tion problems which have many local optimum solutions. The
parameter of population uses in this study is 30 and cross over
rate of 0.1 for GA. The process constraints are given as above
mentioned Table 2 and optimization variables by each scheme
are listed in below Table 4. Where T, P and F stands for tem-
perature, pressure and flow rate, respectively. The subscript
number represents stream number of each process.
5. Results and discussion
The results of profitability analysis for the selected four
schemes is shown in Table 5, which gives the average values of
the four different feed types for good comparison. The average
value would not affect the total trends of this study since the
trend of each feed condition by each scheme is similar. The
total capital cost result shows that IPSI has the highest value,
whereas the HHC separator scheme has the lowest value of
the other schemes due to its simple configuration and fewer
number of process equipment. The most complex scheme IPSI
gives 29.2% higher capital cost than the ISS scheme because
IPSI needs additional compressors and some heat exchangers
for improvements to the column’s bottom section.
The total operating cost is mainly composed of the util-
ity cost and raw material cost. The IPSI process scheme has
the lowest raw material cost compared to the other schemes,
whereas it has the highest capital cost. The raw material sav-
ing for IPSI is 0.02% compared to ISS, and 0.05% and 1.66%
compared to the scrub column and HHC separator schemes,
respectively. Because this study focused on lean feed condi-
tions, the high efficiency of the IPSI is not so remarkable. The
gross profit of ISS and IPSI are similar and both of them higher
than the other two schemes, whereas the payout time for
HHC separator and scrub column schemes are significantly
lower than ISS and IPSI schemes because of simple configu-
ration. The payout time shows the same order of magnitude
compared to the previous study by Getu et al. (2013). The pay-
out time is very short because the capital cost estimation
used here is study estimate which may have order of mag-
nitude accuracy. Nevertheless, we believe that the method of
Table 5 – Profitability analysis for the selected NGL schemes.
ISS
Total capital cost ($) 12,505,611
Total operating cost ($/year) 344,977,737
1. Utility cost ($/year) 754,981
2. Raw material cost ($/year) 344,222,756
By products credits ($/year) 29,705,007
Gross profit ($/year) 364,727,270
Net profit ($/year) 255,309,089
Payout time (year) 0.049
303
Fig. 5 – TAC analysis for each feed composition.
economic analysis from literature also can provide relative
comparison among different processes when design and opti-
mize chemical processes. The effect of the total capital cost is
bigger than that of the raw material cost, it means that even
though IPSI has the lowest raw material cost, the higher capital
cost and the operating cost offset its economic performance.
The HHC separator scheme has the lowest total capital cost,
but its higher operating cost affects its economic performance.
According to the economic analysis shown in Table 5, ISS
has the most favorable utility cost. However, IPSI gives bet-
ter results for raw material cost, while the HHC separator has
the lowest total capital cost due to its simple design concept.
Because of this dissimilarity in each scheme, we defined the
TAC to facilitate comparison between these different schemes
and perform an overall economic evaluation which was con-
sidering annualized total capital cost, total operating cost and
byproduct credit as discussed in part 4.4. The TAC value for
each feed is shown in Fig. 5. For feed 1 (GPM 1.84) the scrub
column scheme had the lowest TAC value, and IPSI gave the
highest TAC. The savings of the scrub column scheme were
0.49% and 0.72% over the ISS scheme and the HHC separa-
tor schemes, respectively. The scrub column also had the best
results for feed 2 (GPM 2.2), saving about 0.06% and 0.39% com-
pared to the ISS and HHC separator schemes, respectively.
The economic advantage of the scrub column lessened with
increasing feed GPM value. When the GPM value reached 2.3
(Feed 3), both the scrub column and ISS schemes had almost
the same TAC value. Both of these schemes had a lower value
than the IPSI and HHC separator schemes by 0.33% and 1.8%,
respectively. However, when the GPM value reached 2.5 (Feed
4), the ISS scheme had the lowest TAC value, which was 0.32%
lower than the scrub column and up to 2.62% lower than the
HHC separator scheme.
6. Conclusions
Economic analysis was performed for the ISS, IPSI, HHC sepa-
rator and scrub column NGL recovery schemes with various
lean feeds conditions. We used the TAC (Total Annualized
IPSI HHC separator Scrub column
17,662,398 771,518 1,517,911
345,229,183 352,179,175 345,885,252
1,089,377 2,240,383 1,561,578
344,139,807 349,938,792 344,323,674
29,672,069 31,070,406 29,508,476
364,442,886 358,891,231 363,623,224
255,110,020 251,223,862 254,536,257
0.069 0.003 0.006
304 chemical engineering research and design 1 2 9 ( 2 0 1 8 ) 297–305
Cost) to compare the overall economic performance of the
selected NGL recovery schemes, which included the annual-
ized total capital cost, operating cost and byproduct credits.
The HHV specification was also incorporated to meet the
requirement of the regional specifications. The results show
that the scrub column scheme has the best performance when
the feed is lean. When the feed GPM value reaches 2.5, the
traditional ISS scheme gives better performance. The HHC
separator and IPSI schemes have the lowest and highest total
capital cost due to the differences in configurational complex-
ity. IPSI gives the best performance in terms of minimum raw
material cost with respect to its high efficiency. Nevertheless,
its high total capital cost and operating cost offset its economic
performance. The HHC separator scheme has the lowest total
capital cost but shows the highest raw material cost due to
its poor separation efficiency compared to the other schemes.
The consideration of lean feeds meant that the required raw
material cost shows little deviation among the schemes. These
results demonstrate that when the feed is considerably lean
(GPM value lower than 2.3), the scrub column scheme shows
the best economic performance.
Acknowledgements
This work was partially supported by Technology Innovation
Program (10060099) funded by the Ministry of Trade Industry
& Energy (MOTIE), Republic of Korea, the Program of Uni-
versity Specialized for Offshore Plant Engineering, funded by
the MOTIE, Republic of Korea, and Engineering Development
Research Center (N0000990) funded by the MOTIE, Republic of
Korea.
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