State-of-the-art assessment of natural gas liquids recovery processes: Techno-economic evaluation, policy implications, open issues, and the way forward

Muhammad Abdul Qyyum, Ahmad Naquash, Junaid Haider, Saad A. Al-Sobhi and Moonyong Lee

Energy, 2022, vol. 238, issue PA

Abstract: Although many improved conceptual designs of natural gas liquids (NGLs) recovery processes have been introduced to enhance the economics and efficiency, real-world applications remain elusive because of the communication gap between researchers and practitioners. To bridge this gap, a state-of-the-art assessment of the NGLs recovery processes is presented along with an overall outline considering the feed conditions, product recovery, purity, specific energy consumption (SEC), process economics, and analysis software using the equation of state model. Lower NGL components in the feed have a higher SEC and lower operating costs than a rich feed. It was also found that the conceptual processes are more energy intensive and complex than commercial processes. The major challenges associated with NGL recovery were assessed, including a high energy consumption, varying feed composition, flexibility in the product recovery, and design considerations for offshore NGL processing. Future directions are proposed, including the application of hybrid separation processes and a process intensification to enhance the compactness, particularly for offshore applications, process optimization, and heat integration. Further, an economic policy study is conducted that provides insight into market dynamics. The development of new natural gas (NG) reserves will boost the NGL market and NG business.

Keywords: Natural gas liquids separation; NGL recovery review; LPG; NGL patented processes; Policy analysis and NGL market; NGL process simulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544221019320
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:238:y:2022:i:pa:s0360544221019320

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2021.121684

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().