Dipartimento di Chimica, Materiali e

Ingegneria Chimica “Giulio Natta”

Exercise of
New Technology Frontiers in Gas Production, Transportation and Processing
(Ing. Stefania Moioli)

Purification of natural gas by chemical absorption

A natural gas stream, with a given content in carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulphide, needs to be
purified from these two acid gases in order to meet the specifications for natural gas use (removal of carbon
dioxide equal to 99% and removal of hydrogen sulfide equal to 99.99%).
To this aim, a chemical absorption plant is used, by employing an aqueous solution of
methyldiethanolamine (50% wt.), MDEA. The natural gas stream at 50 bar and 35°C is fed to an absorber,
where the acid gases are removed, and exits purified. The amine solution, rich in the absorbed acid gases,
is sent to a distillation column, operating at atmospheric pressure, where the solvent is regenerated (by
removal of the absorbed acid gases), to be recycled to the absorber. From the top of the regeneration
column, a stream rich in acid gases is obtained.
The molar composition of the gas is reported in the data. The total solvent lean loading is 0.005 and
the total solvent rich loading, after absorption, is 0.5.

Considering a flowrate of the inlet natural gas equal to 1205 kmol/h, it is asked to:
1. calculate the amount of absorbed acid gases and the molar flow rate of the outlet natural gas
stream;
2. determine, by using a “Rules of Thumb” method (which considers a steam consumption equal
to 0.11 kg steam per liter of circulating amine solution), the energy consumption in the
regeneration section of the plant.
DATA
Feed composition (molar fraction)
mole
composition
fraction
methane 0.756
nitrogen 0.020
ethane 0.060
propane 0.010
n-butane 0.021
i-butane 0.052
n-pentane 0.004
i-pentane 0.003
carbon dioxide 0.051
hydrogen sulphide 0.023

Properties

component molecular weight [kg/kmol]

MDEA 119.163
water 18.01528

Molar density of the MDEA solution (35°C, 50 bar) = 37.81 [kmol/m3]

∆Hev,water (3.5 bar) = 2148 [kJ/kg]