Overview of the Natural Gas Industry

The Chinese are the first to use natural gas commercially. The gas was obtained from shallow
wells, transported in bamboo pipes and use to produce salt from brines. Town gas manufactured
from coal was used in Britain and the united states in the late 17th and early 18th centuries for street
lights and house lightening.

Large scale activity involving natural gas began in the early years of the 20th century. After World
War II, the construction of the safe, reliable, long distance pipeline for the gas transportation
resulted in boom in the gas usage.

The primary use of the natural gas is as a fuel. It is also the source of the hydrocarbon for
petrochemical feedstock and the source for thee elemental Sulphur, an important industrial
chemical. It is an energy source. Natural gas presents many environmental advantages over
petroleum and coal. The production of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas linked to a global
warming. Natural gas is lower than that produced from oil and coal. The nitrogen oxides formed
during the burning of natural gas are 20% of those produced when oil or coal is burned. Particulates
formation is less in gas compared with coal and oil.

Six countries possess two kind of the worlds gas reserves with almost half of the reserves located
in Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, United States, Nigeria, Algeria Venezuela and
Iraq.

The non-conventional gas reserves are coalbed methane (CBM) and natural occurring gas
hydrates. The conventional natural gas occurs in deep reservoirs, either associated with crude oil
(associated gas) or in reservoir that contains little or no crude oil (non-associated gas). Associated
gas is produced with the oil and is separated at the casing head or well head. Non associated gas
is referred to as gas-well gas or dry gas
Schematic Overview of the Natural Gas Industry
Natural gas from well vary in composition. Water is always present at wellhead and its. The gas
reaches the gas processing plant saturated with water at the plant inlet conditions. The typical gas
composition from a Nigerian Field is given as below;

A number of impurities are present natural gas. These impurities dictates how the natural gas is
processed. The impurities include water, Sulphur species ( Hydrogen Sulphide, Carbon Sulphides,
elemental Sulphur and mercaptans), mercuty, normally occurring radioactive materials (NORM),
Diluent (CO2, N2, H2S) and oxygen

Classification

Natural gases are classified according to their liquid content as either lean or rich, and according
to the Sulphur content as either sweet or sour. The gallon of liquids recoverable per 1,000 Standard
Cubic Feet (MScf) of gas (m3 of liquid per 100m3) is used to quantify the liquid content of a natural
gas, GPM. The liquid is defined as C2+.

The rich and lean term refers to the recoverable hydrocarbons present. A sweet gas contains
negligible amount of H2S, while a sour gas has inacceptable quantities of H2S. Hydrogen Sulphide,
H2S is both odiferous and corrosive. The corrosion products are ion sulphides, FeSx, a fire black
powder. Sweet means the gas contains less than 4 ppmv of H2S. The amount of the v allowable in
pipeline quantity gas is 4 to 16 ppmv.

Processing of Principal Product

The three basic reason for processing raw natural gas are the following.

Purification, Removal of materials that inhibits the use of the gas as an industrial and
residential fuel
Separation, splitting out of components that have greater value as petrochemical
feedstocks, Stand alone fuels (propane) or industrial gas (ethane, Helium)
Liquefaction, increase of the energy density of the gas for storage or transportation

A process may be classified as either separation or purification.

Figure; ( Proudly Overview of the material present in natural gas and states of possible products

The products are methane, ethane, propane, butanes, natural gasoline and Sulphur.

Product Specification

Salable products from gas processing are specified in terms of composition and performance
criteria. The performance criteria include Wobbe number, heating value, total inert, water, oxygen
and Sulphur content. The first two criteria relate to combination characteristics. The other three
provide protection from pipeline plugging and corrosion. Specifications are established in contract
negotiations
SPECIFICATION FOR PIPELINE QUALITY GAS
Heating Value

Pipeline gas is bought and sold on the basis of its heating value. The procedure for calculating the
heat effect in standard texts on thermodynamics. The determination of the heating value of a fuel
involves the standard states after the water formed in the reaction.

i. All water formed in a liquid (gross heating value, called Higher Heating Value (HHV)
ii. All the water formed in a gas (net heating value called the Lower Heating Value (LHV).

The formula for the calculation of ideal gas gross heating values, on a volumetric basis are; (Gas
Processor Association, 1996)

Hvideal(dry) = =1 -------------------------------- (1)

Hvideal(Sat) = (1 =1 -------------------------------- (2)

Psat
w
= ---------------------------- (3)
Pb

() 1-xd

14.50 0.9823
14.65 0.9825
14.696 0.9826
14.73 0.9826
14.025 0.9829

Wobbe Number

The maintenance of the same carbon characteristics are desirable when one gas composition
switched to another. One of the important consideration is maintenance of the same heat release at
the burner for a given pressure drop through a control valve.

These combustion characteristics is measured by the Wobbes Number. It is defined as the gross
heating value (BTU/Scf) of the gas divided by the square root of the specific gravity (ratio of the
density of the gas divided by density of air)
 Gross Heating Value
WB = 1
Specific gravity2

With the specific gravity corrected for the flow through the orifice.

The Wobbe Number has a value between 1,100 and 1,400

The Wobbes Number is calculated from the gross heating value and specific gravity of the mixture

Overview of Natural Gas Processing

The primary purpose of gas processing plants includes the following.

i. Dehydration of gas to reduce corrosion and gas hydrates formation

ii. Associated oil stabilization to strip associated gas from oil
iii. Removal of carbon dioxide and nitrogen for enhancement oil recovery (EOR)
iv. Upgrading of subsequent gas; removal of undesired diluents N2, H2S and CO2).
Removal of nitrogen is most difficult because it requires cryogenic processing
v. Recovery of Helium. Natural gas is the primary source of Helium
vi. Liquefaction for the production of hydrocarbon liquids and natural gas streams to make
liquefied natural gas (LNG).

The plant processes include field operation and inlet recovery, inlet compression, gas treating,
dehydration, hydrocarbon recovery, nitrogen rejection, helium recovery, outlet compression,
liquid processing and Sulphur recovery.

The important component of these plant are utilities, process control and safety systems.
Feed Receiving

The gas and liquid go into the inlet receiving. Here condensed water, hydrocarbon liquids and
solids are removed. Water and solids are processed for disposal. The hydrocarbon liquid go on to
liquid processing inlet compression.

Most gas plants have low pressure gas streams entering the plants. The inlet compression is
necessary to drive the cryogenic liquid recovery process. The same type of compression are used
for field and outlet compression.

Gas Treating.

A gas treating step removes the acid gas H2S and CO2, along with other Sulphur impurities. Mostly,
water based absorbents are used to remove these impurities.

Dehydration

The gas that leaves the gas treating step is water saturated. Most gas streams contains too much
water to meet pipeline specifications or to enter the cryogenic section of the plant. There are several
dehydration processes. These processes will be treated in details along the course programmes..

Helium Recovery

When the helium content is above 0.5vol%, the helium is recovered with other trace components
like BTEX (benzene, toluene, ethyl benzene and xylene), emission and mercury. Elemental
mercury can cause mechanical failure in aluminum heat exchangers

Outlet Compression

Most plants must compress the gas before it goes to the pipeline. The plants with cryogenic
hydrocarbon recovery use turbo-expanders to provide refrigeration in the cryogenic section. Wok
generated in expansion is used to recompress the outlet gas.

Liquid Recovery

When Natural gas liquid (NGL) is a product, the processing steps of sweetening, drying and
fractionating the liquids are employed
Sulphur Recovery

When H2S removal is required, a Sulphur recovery process is utilized if venting the H2S will
exceed environmental limit.

Liquefaction

Gas is imported to industrial nations from remote locations. Liquefaction plays an important role
as means for gas storage. Liquefaction produces liquefied natural gas (LNG). The storage,
transportation and vaporization processes will be discussed during this workshop.