Application: Reject nitrogen from natural gas to increase heating value.
Description: Natural gas feed to the nitrogen rejection unit (NRU) is partially condensed and fed to the
top of the high-pressure (HP) column. A reboiler driven by condensing the feed provides stripping vapors in the column. The bottoms from the first stripping column are enriched in hydrocarbons and depleted in nitrogen. This HP residue is boiled in the warm NRU exchanger and sent to residue gas compression. Enriched in nitrogen, the overhead vapor from the column is sent to the cold end of the NRU. Vapor from the HP column is partially condensed against returning residue streams. The vapor and liquid are separated in a vertical separator drum. The vapor stream, enriched in nitrogen, from the drum is further condensed and is fed as reflux to the low-pressure (LP) column.
Liquid from the drum is the feed to the LP column. Vapor generated in the reboiler strips the descending liquid of nitrogen creating the remainder of the residue product. The liquid flowing down the column scrubs the methane from the vapor, creating a high-purity nitrogen vent stream from the top of the column.
Liquid product from the LP column is pumped to LP residue pressure. This stream is boiled against the condensing HP vapor from the overhead of the first stripping column. The nitrogen vent stream and LP residue stream are warmed in both exchangers in the NRU along with the HP residue gas stream. The residue streams are sent to recompression for export to pipeline systems. Nitrogen is vented to the atmosphere or recompressed for reinjection.
Operating conditions: The dual-column NRU process has good CO2 tolerance and feed flexibility, handling feeds from 5 to 80 mol% nitrogen and pressures as low as 250 psig (17 barg).
Economics: The dual-column NRU has high hydrocarbon recovery (>99.9%). This process is particularly well-suited for streams with less than 20% nitrogen in the feed, and is easily adapted to recover helium (HeRU) as well. The hydrocarbons are recovered at two pressure levels, reducing recompression requirements. The amount of hydrocarbons recovered from the second column is greatly reduced requiring a smaller cryogenic pump.
Licensor: Air Products and Chemicals, Inc.
