Low Cost Chemical Feedstocks Using an Improved and Energy Efficient Natural Gas Liquid (NGL) Removal Process (Final Technical Report)
The overall objective of this project is to develop a new low-cost and energy efficient Natural Gas Liquid (NGL) recovery process - through a combination of theoretical, bench-scale and pilot-scale testing - so that it could be offered to the natural gas industry for commercialization. The new process, known as the IROA process, is based on U.S. patent No. 6,553,784, which if commercialized, has the potential of achieving substantial energy savings compared to currently used cryogenic technology. When successfully developed, this technology will benefit the petrochemical industry, which uses NGL as feedstocks, and will also benefit other chemical industries that utilize gas-liquid separation and distillation under similar operating conditions. Specific goals and objectives of the overall program include: (i) collecting relevant physical property and Vapor Liquid Equilibrium (VLE) data for the design and evaluation of the new technology, (ii) solving critical R&D issues including the identification of suitable dehydration and NGL absorbing solvents, inhibiting corrosion, and specifying proper packing structure and materials, (iii) designing, construction and operation of bench and pilot-scale units to verify design performance, (iv) computer simulation of the process using commercial software simulation platforms such as Aspen-Plus and HYSYS, and (v) preparation of a commercialization plan and identification of industrial partners that are interested in utilizing the new technology.