Author(s)

R. K. Abdulrahman & I. M. Sebastine

Abstract

Natural gas is the most important and popular fossil fuel in the current era and in the future as well. However, because natural gas exists in deep underground reservoirs it may contain several non-hydrocarbon components, for example, hydrogen sulphide and carbon dioxide. These impurities are undesirable compounds and cause several technical problems, for example, corrosion and environmental pollution. Recently, the Iraqi Kurdistan region has achieved huge development in many fields, for example, education, economic and in the oil and gas industries. Khurmala dome is located in southwest Erbil-Kurdistan region. The Kurdistan region government has paid great attention to this dome to provide fuel for the Kurdistan region. Currently, the Khurmala associated natural gas is flaring at the field and there is a plan to recover and trade this gas and to use it either as feedstock to the power station or to sell it on the global market. However, laboratory analysis has shown that the Khurmala natural gas has huge quantities of H2S (about 5.3%) and CO2 (about 4.4%). Therefore, this study aims to simulate the prospective Khurmala gas sweetening process by using the latest version of the Aspen HYSYS V. 7.3 program. The simulation work is based on the gas sweetening process using DEA solution and it has achieved high acid gas removal, for instance, H2S concentration in sweet gas stream was about 4 ppm at 400 m3/hr DEA solution circulation rate. In addition, the simulation work has also achieved process optimization by using several amine types and blends for example, MEA and MDEA. It has also studied some of the critical amine process factors for each amine type, such as the amine circulation rate and amine

Keywords

natural gas sweetening, Khurmala dome, MEA, DEA, MDEA process simulation, Aspen HYSYS V.7.3, process optimization