Study on Economic Evaluation of Different Techniques for CO2 Separation from Natural Gas

Separation of CO2 from natural gas is categorised as one of the most complicated process designed to purify natural gas. It is essential for various hydrocarbons to be separated from impurities such as CO2 from wellhead to increase calorific value of the natural gas and to meet pipeline specifications. The development of energy efficient and cost saving process starts be rapid due to the presence of high CO2 contents in Malaysian natural gas wells. The natural gas feed from the wellhead varies in terms of its CO2 content. The present study investigates the CO2 content from 5% up to 70%. The cryogenic anti-sublimation method of separating CO2 is being studied. The performance in terms of the energy consumption is compared with a traditional absorption method employing diethanolamine (DEA).Both the method is evaluated by development of process flowsheet and simulation using HYSYS. All process optimization is done using the sequential search algorithm.