Separation of Moisture from Natural Gas Using Membrane Separation

Natural gas is a vital component of the world's supply of energy. It is one of the
cleanest, safest, most useful of all energy sources and gives many uses to the
residentially, industrially and commercially. The natural gas has to be treated in
several processing steps especially dehydration and hydrocarbon dew point in order
to meet the required pipeline and quality specifications. The impurities especially
water has to be removed in order to avoid the build-up of gas hydrates and to
upgrade the gas pipeline specifications. For this study, membrane technology is the
main concern as it is now becoming a new technology and one of the alternatives in
gas separation beside the existence technology such as adsorption or cryogenic
distillation process.
The method used in carrying out this research project is through modeling using
MathCAD software. The scope study is determination on the permeability of the
pure methane and moisture, and the mixture of methane and moisture with respect to
the changed in parameters such as pressure, temperature and pore size. The study is
extended to analyze the selectivity (separation factor) of both gases with respect to
pressure, temperature and pore size complete mixing model.
Throughout the study, it could be concluded that the permeability is most favorable
at higher pore size, temperature, pressure and moisture contents. The separation of
moisture from the methane is most enhanced at the higher pressure and pore size but
at lower temperature. By using the selected membrane with pores size equals to 0.4
nm, ~=0.272 and .=0.3676, the separation is proved to occur through the
mathematical modeling using MathCAD. The results obtained are satisfied and
fulfilled all the objectives of this study.