TY - BOOK

T1 - Natural Gas Treatment with Ionic Liquids

AU - Janiczek, Peter

N1 - no embargo

PY - 2012

Y1 - 2012

N2 - Natural gas, leaving the well, is normally saturated with water from the reservoir and quite often there are significant amounts of gaseous impurities. In order to reach sales gas specifications (e.g. G31 standard for Austria), the amount of these impurities has to be reduced. Selecting the correct treatment process for a specific gas-field depends on a series of influencing factors. Simplicity of the process and operability is as important as the necessary energy for recycling. The basic idea of this thesis was to determine, whether ionic liquids can be used as solvents for certain gaseous components on an industrial scale. A feasible large scale, high purity, non-hazardous and non-toxic production and operation of the process, were the overall criteria for candidate selection. The behaviour of CO2, H2S and CH4 absorption, including the pressure-equilibrium determination, at elevated pressure, as well as detailed water vapour solubility, viscosity measurements and extended stability measurements were performed for a blend of imidazolium based ionic liquids. For economical considerations in order to recycle fluid, the released heat-of-reaction was determined experimentally for CO2 and H2O. Possible material incompatibility or corrosion was analysed for different steels and elastomers. Finally, experiments in technical scale columns were able to show the recycling behaviour successfully. It is concluded that the proposed process is feasible with some restrictions.

AB - Natural gas, leaving the well, is normally saturated with water from the reservoir and quite often there are significant amounts of gaseous impurities. In order to reach sales gas specifications (e.g. G31 standard for Austria), the amount of these impurities has to be reduced. Selecting the correct treatment process for a specific gas-field depends on a series of influencing factors. Simplicity of the process and operability is as important as the necessary energy for recycling. The basic idea of this thesis was to determine, whether ionic liquids can be used as solvents for certain gaseous components on an industrial scale. A feasible large scale, high purity, non-hazardous and non-toxic production and operation of the process, were the overall criteria for candidate selection. The behaviour of CO2, H2S and CH4 absorption, including the pressure-equilibrium determination, at elevated pressure, as well as detailed water vapour solubility, viscosity measurements and extended stability measurements were performed for a blend of imidazolium based ionic liquids. For economical considerations in order to recycle fluid, the released heat-of-reaction was determined experimentally for CO2 and H2O. Possible material incompatibility or corrosion was analysed for different steels and elastomers. Finally, experiments in technical scale columns were able to show the recycling behaviour successfully. It is concluded that the proposed process is feasible with some restrictions.

KW - Natural Gas Treatment

KW - Ionic Liquids

KW - Gas Absorption

KW - Gas Solubility

KW - Thermal Stability

KW - Heat-Of-Reaction

KW - Erdgasreinigung

KW - Ionische Flüssigkeiten

KW - Gas Absorption

KW - Gas Löslichkeit

KW - Thermische Stabilität

KW - Reaktionswärme

M3 - Doctoral Thesis

ER -