Simulation of Typical Natural Gas Dehydration Unit using Glycol Solutions

Natural gas dehydration system used absorption method to remove water vapor in wet gas. Glycol solutions are the commonly used liquid absorbent in dehydration process. There are three types of glycol that are typically used in industries but any of them gives a different water dew point temperature. In this study, a HYSYS model of the plant was developed and used to investigate the important design parameters. Water dew point phase behavior was determined for different types of glycol solutions. The investigation revealed that triethylene glycol (TEG) system is adequate to condition the gas to achieve a lower water dew point. At the other hand, study was done on improving the glycol-water absorption rate by varying the glycol flow rate, number of equilibrium stages, reboiler temperature as well as the inlet gas temperature. Lastly, comparisons between theoretical and simulation results are justified to determine whether it shows a good validation of the result to meet the requirements of current industry practices.
In today’s competitive economy, Engineer must become as productive as possible. One means of increasing this productivity is to use process simulation packages. Hence this paper looks for proffer solution options for optimizing and maintaining the natural gas dehydration plant by using HYSYS simulator software.