Simulation of Onshore and Offshore Facility Flare Gas Reutilization in an Energy Recovery Scheme

Since the birth of the oil industry, flaring has been used upstream to depressurize eruptive wells and downstream to burn excess gases in refining and petrochemical plants and also in associated and natural gas treatment plants. Enormous quantities of co-produced gas are flared as a waste by-product and large supplies of gas have emerged. Although this process ensures the safety of the facility by reducing the pressures in the system that is resulted from gas liberation, gas flaring has become a public concern and a priority issue for public authorities because it is first a waste of a non-renewable source. It would be highly desirable to recover energy from flared natural gas to generate electricity especially in the offshore setting where electricity is not readily available. Hence, more attention should be focused on the effective utilization of flared natural gas in oil and gas offshore platforms.
The energy recovery system, as one of the promising techniques, has been attracting increased attention to generate electricity from flared natural gas. In this project, the main aim is to simulate a flare gas recovery system by utilizing the method of generating electricity from microturbine using HYSYS software to evaluate the potential energy that can be recovered from gas flaring. It is concluded that microturbine with recuperator gives out a better energy recovery than microturbine without recuperator and the concentration of methane is a viral factor in the energy recovery scheme.