ASSIGNMENT 2

PROCESS AND DYNAMIC SYSTEM MODELLING (PPSD)

Arranged by:
MUHAMMAD HUSAINI ZAIDAN (18/428877/TK/47379)
LUNARDI SETIAWAN (18/428873/TK/47375)

DEPARTMENT OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

FAKULTAS TEKNIK
UNIVERSITAS GADJAH MADA
2021
A. Process Description
Acid gas treating facility is going to be simulated using UNISIM. A water-saturated
natural gas stream is used as the feed of this plant. Diethanolamine (DEA) is used as the
absorbing medium that are located on the amine contactor. The contactor consists of 20
stages. The Rich DEA from the contactor will be flashed to 90 psia to release the absorbed
hydrocarbons. In the heat exchanger, the rich amine is heated to 200oF and inserted into
regenerator that contains 20 stages. The acid gas is taken out from the regenerator,
meanwhile the lean amine is recycled back. Analysis on Acid gas and sweet gas are done
to meet the specification.

B. Design and Specification

1. Flow sheet
The simulation process was made using UNISIM Design 460.2. The process flow
diagram is presented below.

2. Fluid Package

The Fluid Package that are being used is Amine Package, as it contains DEA as the
component in the system.
3. Feed
The stream of Sour Gas and DEA to Cont which is the mixture of natural gas has
the composition and condition are shown below.

Condition Composition
5. Separator

The seperator will act to seperate gas from the liquid that are present in the natural gas.

6. Absorber / Contactor

The DEA contactor will separate the sweet gas from the CO2 as well as H2S using
DEAmine. The separation is done using 20 number of absorber stages. High
pressures are needed on this step as absorber tends to do well in high pressure.
Sweet gas from the contractor are composed of mostly methane.
8. Valve

Pressure relief valve is installed to bring down the pressure from 1000 psia to 90 psia

9. Separator

Separation between the liquid and vapor rich DEA + acid gas are done, the liquid
phase of DEA + acid gas will be separated and be recycled in further process
11. Heat Exchanger

The heat exchanger will act to pre heat the Rich DEA from 59,91oC to 93,33oC by
using the feed from the distilation or regenerator coloumn.
12. Distillation Column / Regenerator

The regenerator column will separates the acid gas from the Lean DEA that will be
recycled into the process. The total number of stages that are being used in the
distillation column is 20 stages, with 18 real stages total.
13. Mixer

Make up H2O is inserted to the system by using mixer, back calculation of the
makeup H2O are done, the DEA TO COOL stream need to have 6531 barrel/day Std
ideal liquid volume flow.
14. Cooler

The cooler will cool the DEA from 192,4oF to 90,8oF.

15. Pump

The pump will increase the pressure of the DEA from 16,5 psia to 995 psia.
16. Recycle

The Lean DEA will be recycled back into the contactor. Forward transfer for the
recycle are done in this simulation, with the sensitivities of each parameters are
mentioned below.
17. Result

The result of the main data from this simulation process is presented as follows.
From the simulation mentioned above, the acid gas plant is functioned to separates the CO2 as well
as H2S from the natural gas. The separation marked by the low fraction of CO2 and H2S in the
sweet gas from the absorber column. The H2S later will be taken out as the acid gas and DEA will
went through preparation process to be recycled back to the absorber column.

The energy needed to run the acid gas plant are mentioned below, with reboiler Q has the highest
energy expenditure among other equipments.

Name Cooler Q Pump Q Con Q Reboiler Q Total

Heat Flow [hp] 3584 144,1 1272 5327 10327,1

From the simulation above, the important parameter to consider for the acid gas plant is the amount
of energy used, the rich H2S and CO2 loading, as well as the lean H2S and CO2 loading number.
Rich H2S loading is a molar flow of H2S that are present in the rich DEA stream. Same follows
for the rich CO2 Loading streams. Meanwhile the Lean H2S Loading is a molar flow of H2S that
are present in the lean DEA stream. The rich H2S and CO2 loading have to be higher than the Lean
H2S and CO2 loading, as it indicates the H2S and CO2 is absorbed by DEAmine
C. Process Variation
The variations are done to know the effect of each component in the process result. In this
simulation, we made the variation of the pressure of the sour gas, solvent in the contactor
process, and the number of stages that are present in the system.

i. Pressure of the SOUR GAS

In this simulation the pressure of sour gas is important for the absorber system, as
higher pressure means the more H2S and CO2 will be absorbed by recycled DEA. To
prove the theory, the process variation are done.

Pressure increase in the natural gas stream will give the molar flow of H2S and CO2 is
increased the acid gas, but the difference is insignificant. But interesting phenomenon
is occurring in the 200 psia pressure, the flow H2S and CO2 is increased to 47,314 and
116,35 lbmole/hr, the total work needed to complete the process is decreased and the
sweet gas methane fraction is higher than in the 1700 psia.

ii. Changes of solvent in the contactor process

The DEA in the process could be replaced with ethanol amine as the solvent. The effect
of the solvent changes is analyzed. Our results show that changing the solvent from
DEA to MEA affected the several variables. The replacement of solvents has no
significant impact to the overall energy required for the plant. It is observed that the
volume fraction of CO2 in the lean gas increases but the H2S concentration decreases
with this replacement. Shown below are the simulation results when DEA as the
process solvent is replaced with MEA (ethanolamine). Simulations with both solvents
yield a relatively safe results with regards to the maximum acid gas loadings for CO2
and H2S recommendations by D. B. Robinson.
 DMEA

MEA

It is observed that CO2 Vol Frac increases from 0.0026 to 0.0387, but the concentration
of H2S decreases from 2.6401 to 1.9105 ppm. CO2 and H2S loadings are well below the
recommended value.

iii. The number of stages in the absorber system

H2S is unfavorable in the syngas .Number of stages required in process to produce
sweet gas without H2S is about 17 stages and proven in the simulation below.