Sour Gas Sweetening Technologies for Distributed Resources – A Process Simulation Study

With increasing natural gas consumption, a wider range of gas fields/resources is being explored, however utilization of distributed natural gas resources remains a challenge. The primary reasons are that the cost of processing/treatment and transport, which can be higher than the natural gas selling price. Furthermore, distributed/stranded gas resources are typically limited in volume/capacity, which may them uneconomic to recover. Therefore, the identification of low cost small scale gas treatment processes is a key enabling step in utilization of distributed natural gas resources. Desulfurization is a critical natural gas treatment process, as it removes H2S, which is a catalyst poison and also avoids the formation of SO2. In order to identify a suitable small scale desulfurization process, we evaluate three technologies, triazine absorption, LOCAT, and SourCat, and analyze their techno-economic performance at different conditions.