Capacity Expansion Options for NGL Fractionation

Abstract

Mixtures of liquid hydrocarbons recovered from natural gas are commercially separated in fractionator plants to produce higher value ethane, propane, isobutane, normal butane and gasoline products. Figure 1 shows a conventional fractionator with deethanizer, depropanizer, debutanizer and deisobutanizer columns. As demand for natural gas liquids grows, it may be cost effective to expand the capacity of an existing fractionator rather than building a new one. In this case, it may be difficult or expensive to add new distillation columns; and it is advantageous to find ways to increase the capacity of existing columns with as little disturbance of the surrounding infrastructure as possible. Distillation column capacity can sometimes be incrementally increased by replacing the existing column trays with more modern, higher capacity internals. However, when this is done the energy efficiency of the process is not improved, and large increases in capacity are generally precluded. It has been shown that fractionator energy consumption may be reduced by as much as 60% by using distributed distillation combined with careful heat integration. The present discussion shows how large increases in fractionator capacity may be achieved, while also significantly reducing energy consumption, by incorporating several new process improvements. The front end deethanizer shown in Figure 1 is chosen as an example, but the same improvements may be used in the other columns to achieve increased capacity and reduced energy consumption.

Department(s)

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

0096-8870

Document Type

Article - Conference proceedings

Document Version

Citation

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2024 The Authors, All rights reserved.

Publication Date

01 Jan 1998

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