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Steps to set up a simulation in HYSYS v8.6 to model a simple dew point control system consisting of:
Gas chiller
Flash separator
Liquid stabilizer with gas recycle & compression
Product gas compression
Simple propane refrigeration loop
When the simulation is set up the overall PFD should look like the following figure.
Basis
A gas plant is processing 100 MMscfd (dry basis) to produce a spec pipeline gas as well as a pipeline
raw mix liquid product. The following are known conditions for the feedstock and specification for
the products:
The composition of the feed gas is shown in the following table.
The gas enters the plant at 400 psia & 120F.
The gas has a small amount of water, 2 lb water per MMscf dry gas.
The produced pipeline gas should have a gross heating value between 905 to 1050 Btu/scf 1
& a hydrocarbon dew point no higher than 15F.
The produced pipeline gas should be delivered to the pipeline at 1000 psia and no higher
than 120F.
The produced liquids shall be exported via pipeline & stabilized to have a TVP (true vapor
pressure) @ 100F no greater than 103 psia.
A simple propane loop will be used to provide the chilling duty. The condenser will operate
at 120F. The minimum approach temperature within the chiller will be 10F.
1 If the gross heating value spec cannot be achieved set the chilled separator to the lowest reasonable
temperature when using a simple propane chilling loop, -30F.
Component Mol%
N2 0.357
CO2 0.194
C1 80.980
C2 13.238
C3 3.438
i-C4 0.431
n-C4 0.742
i-C5 0.199
n-C5 0.156
n-C6 0.163
n-C7 0.065
n-C8 0.026
n-C9 0.010
The first step is to add a set of pure chemical species to represent the gas & water phases. With
Component Lists highlighted click on the Add button. From the list of pure components pick: H2O,
Nitrogen, CO2, Methane, Ethane, Propane, i-Butane, n-Butane, i-Pentane, n-Pentane, n-Hexane,
n-Heptane, n-Octane, & n-Nonane.
It would be a good idea to save this file. Click the File tab & select Save As. Choose an appropriate
name & location.
Double-click on the Dry Feed stream to open up the entry forms for this stream. Enter the 100
MMscfd flowrate in the Molar Flow box. Note that once you enter the flowrate it changes the units to
lbmole/hr.
Now we need to specify the composition. Select Composition under Worksheet in the left-hand
column. Click the Edit button to bring up a form to enter the composition of this stream. Enter the
values from the table in the Basis section as Mole Fractions. Note that these add up to approximately
100, not 1. Select the Normalize button. Click OK. Now you should see that the form associated with
the stream is in green, meaning that all values for the stream have been calculated.
Select Composition under Worksheet in the left-hand column. Click the Edit button to bring up a
form to enter the composition of this stream. Enter a 1 for the H2O mole fraction. Select the
Normalize button. Click OK. Now you should see that the form associated with the stream is still
yellow because the temperature has not been specified. That is OK, were going to back-calculate
the final condition so that the total feed gas is 120F.
Select the Worksheet tab. Note that the flowrate & pressure of the Total Feed stream are calculated.
But we still have to specify some type of temperature information to fully calculate Total Feed.
Specify the temperature as 120F. Note that not only have all properties been calculated for Total
Feed but also the final conditions for Feed Water have been determined. A Mixer is an isenthalpic
operation, so the enthalpy for Feed Water (and hence its temperature & quality) became specified
once we fully specified Total Feed.
Lets estimate the needed temperature for the cold separator Click on the Worksheet tab &
specify -10F for the temperature of Chilled Gas. Notice that all values are calculated for Chilled
Gas, Cold Liquid, & Cold Vapor.
For now well use trial-and-error to determine an appropriate temperature for the cold separator.
Note that if we specify the temperature of Chilled Gas as 9.5F we get a cricondentherm of Cold
Vapor of just over 15F.
But before we modify the cold separators operation we will add the liquid stabilizer section.
Liquid Stabilization
The next step is to determine if the produced liquid will make the TVP spec of 103 psia. Double-
click on Cold Liquid & select Properties under the Worksheet heading in the left-hand column. At the
bottom of the list there is an item for True VP at 37.8 C [psia]. The value is 654.9 psia, much higher
than our spec. We can look at the composition to see the problem it has 16% methane. This is
much too high to try to have in a raw mix NGL.
Double-click on VLV-100. Specify the Inlet as Cold Liquid and define a new stream Flashed Liquid
as the Outlet.
Lets define the stabilizing column as a 10-stage column with a kettle reboiler. Double-click on
Stabilizer. Set the Top Stage Inlet feed as Flashed Liquid. Define new streams Recovered Gas for
the Ovhd Vapour Outlet and Stabilized Liquid for the Bottoms Liquid Outlet. Define the stream
Q-Reboiler for the Reboiler Energy Stream. Set the # Stages as 10. Press the Next> button to
continue the definition for this tower.
Lets look running the tower at 200 psia. Specify 200 for both Top Stage Pressure & the Reboiler
Pressure. Press the Next > button to continue the towers definition.
Were able to specify temperatures on this next form. Ultimately we will want to run the reboiler in
such as way as to produce a liquid with a 103 psia vapor pressure at 100F. If we were running the
tower at 103 psia then we could set the reboiler temperature as 100F. However, since were
running the tower at a higher pressure the reboiler temperature must be higher; for now lets set an
estimate of 200F. Press the Next > button to continue the towers definition.
The tower does not run automatically because the specifications have not been fully defined. Select
Specs Summary item in the left-hand column. Notice that the default spec on the column is to
produce an overhead product rate (whose value has not been specified). But this is not how we
want to run this column. Before we enter the true spec click on the Active box for Ovhd Prod Rate to
turn it off.
Even though we have fully specified the tower the feed coming from VLV-100 has not been fully
specified, so the tower will not run. Go to the Worksheet tab and enter 200 for the pressure of
Flashed Liquid. Now that this feed is fully specified the tower will quickly calculate & converge.
Select the Active check box; now the tower becomes unconverged (because we have overspecified
the unit with both the TVP spec & the reboiler temperature spec). Select the Temperature column
specification & uncheck its Active checkbox. Now the tower will converge again, now with a reboiler
temperature of 166.4F.
Lets look at how much has been stripped out. Double-click on Recovered Gas. Select Composition
under the Worksheet tab. Notice that this gas has very high concentrations of methane & ethane. But
could this be directly produced as pipeline gas? Select Properties. Note that the HHV is too high,
1449 Btu/scf.
Note that some of the items have been flipped on the PFD shown above. This was done by selecting
the item on the Flowsheet, selecting Flowsheet/Modify in the ribbon, & then selecting Flip
Horizontal.
Double-click Recycle Gas Compressor. Set the Inlet as the Recovered Gas stream. Create an Outlet
stream HP Recycle Gas & a work Energy stream W-Recycle Compressor. Select the Worksheet tab.
Set the outlet pressure of the HP Recycle Gas to 400 psia. Note the calculations are completed using
the default adiabatic efficiency, 75%, and gives an outlet temperature of 225F.
Double-click on RCY-1. Select HP Recycle Gas as the Inlet. Create a stream Recycled Gas as the
Outlet.
Double-click on the Mixer Recycle Mixer. Select Process Feed as the Outlet. For now, only select
Total Feed as the Inlet.
How has adding the recycle gas affected the final results? There is not a great deal of Recycled Gas
being mixed with the fresh feed so the composition of the Cold Vapor does not change by much. The
cricondentherm increases only slightly to 15.07F.
The produced gas also still has a higher heating value that is too high, 1176 Btu/scf. We can try to
decrease the HHV by reducing the temperature of the Chilled Gas. Lets lower this temperature to
the lowest limit reasonable for a simple propane chilling loop, -30F. Reducing this temperature
does shift more of the heavy ends out of the produced gas & the HHV is lower. However, the HHV of
Chilled Gas is still too high, 1145 Btu/scf. Unfortunately this is pretty much the best we can do when
using a chilled single-stage flash separation unit.
Return to the Simulation section. Lets add a stream for the ethylene glycol, EG, into the Recycle
Mixer. Double-click on the stream EG. Select Composition & set it to 85 wt% ethylene glycol & 15
wt% water. Select Conditions; set the pressure to 400 psia & its temperature to 120F (typical for
air cooling after regenerating in a small packed column). For now set the mass flow rate to 370
lb/hr (this should make the Cold Water stream about 55 wt% glycol).
Lets create the streams for the refrigeration loop starting at the Chiller. Double-click on Chiller.
Create new inlet & outlet streams Refrig Liquid & Refrig Vapor, respectively. Make sure that these
streams are associated with the Cold side. Specify a zero pressure drop. Under the Worksheet tab
specify the conditions for the outlet stream Refrig Vapor (1 vapor fraction & -40F).
Double-click on C3 Condenser. Select HP Vapor as the Inlet & Condensed Liquid as the Outlet;
create Q-C3 Condenser as the Energy stream. Under Parameters set the Delta P as 0. Now the
refrigeration loop calculations are completed.
Product Compression
The final step is to add compression for the final product gas. Add to the flowsheet the unit:
A Compressor, Product Gas Compressor
Optimizing Process
The basic process has now been set up. Note that there are three major power users:
Product Gas Compressor 4,027 hp
Recycle Gas Compressor 111 hp
Refrigeration Compressor 7,982 hp
The major step for optimization is to recover the refrigeration from the cold streams from the DPC
Separator. By doing so there would be less refrigeration duty needed, reducing the power
requirement for the C3 Compressor. Also, by warming the Cold Liquid before going to the
Stabilizer the amount of reboiler duty will also be reduced.
As an example, if we send the Cold Vapor to the Chiller to recover some its refrigeration (heating to
-14F so that the outlet of the Product Gas Compressor is limited to 120F) then we reduce the
power to the C3 Compressor (7,327 hp) but increase the power to the Product Gas Compressor
(4,275 hp). Overall the power needed for these two compressors decreases by 3.4%.