Dehydration with refrigeration

Refrigeration in natural gas treating is a process that serves a

dual dewpoint control functionnamely, it is used to meet the hydrocarbon dewpoint as well as the
water dewpoint specification for residue or sales gas.

Dewpoint control by refrigeration

The temperature to which the gas is cooled
depends first on meeting these dewpoint specifications. This is the minimum cooling requirement.
Cooling the gas to lower temperatures than the minimum temperature for dewpoint control has to be
justified by the economics of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) recovery. This requires a cost analysis of the
value of additional LPG recovery versus increased capital and operating costs. Additional recovery of
LPG is achieved by either of the following methods:

chilling the gas to colder temperatures, such as 20 to 30F

contacting the gas stream with lean oil in an absorption tower

Refrigeration is basically pumping heat from one medium to another. Heat by itself can only flow from a
higher temperature medium to a lower temperature medium. Thus, refrigeration is a process that
provides the cooling medium to which the gas is exposed. Refrigeration systems generally operate
trouble free but can drop in efficiency, which requires investigation.The heat exchanger cools the
incoming gas to the refrigeration unit by exchanging heat with the cold gas, which has been chilled to
the design cold temperature in the propane chiller.Because the gas entering the refrigeration unit is
normally saturated with water vapor and the temperature to which the gas is cooled is substantially
below the hydrate point of the gas, some means of preventing hydrate formation must be instituted.
The formation temperature of hydrates at a given pressure can be suppressed by the addition of
chemicals, such as methanol or glycol. In conventional refrigeration units, the common chemical used
for hydrate suppression in the process gas is monoethylene glycol, usually referred to as:

1- ethylene glycol (EG).

2- glycol.
Schematic drawing of typical IFPEXOL dewpoint control process.