• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.1473-1478
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• 2011

In this study, simulation and optimization works for a demethanizer column have been performed to obtain ethane and heavier products from a pretreated natural gas stream. Pretreated natural gas feed stream is partially condensed after being precooled by exchanging heat with demethanizer top vapor stream and by using an external refrigeration cycle with a propane refrigerant. Vapor stream is furtherly cooled and partially condensed through a turbo-expander and the power generated from the expansion of turbo-expander was delivered to the compressor for the residue gas compression. Liquid stream is being cooled by Joule-Thomson expansion valve and is fed to the middle section of the demethanizer. Ethane recovery percent for feed natural gas was set to 75% and methane to ethane molar ratio was fixed as 0.015. Propane refrigeration heat duty was reduced by splitting the feed stream and to exchange heat with side reboiler.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.1032-1037
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• 2011

In this study, simulation and optimization works for a demethanizer column have been performed to obtain ethane and heavier products from a pretreated natural gas stream. Pretreated natural gas feed stream was partially condensed after being precooled by exchanging heat with demethanizer top vapor stream and by using an external refrigeration cycle with a propane refrigerant. Vapor stream was cooled further and partially condensed through a turbo-expander. The power generated from the expansion of turbo-expander was delivered to the compressor for the residue gas compression. Liquid stream was cooled by Joule-Thomson expansion valve and was fed to the middle section of the demethanizer. Recovery percent of ethane for feed natural was set to 80% and methane to ethane molar ratio was fixed as 0.0119. On the other hand, some of the cold heat could be recovered by splitting the feed stream and by exchanging heat with side reboiler in order to reduce the heat duty in the propane refrigeration cycle.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.51 no.2
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• pp.245-249
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• 2013

The depropanizing, debutanizing and deisobutanizing fractionation steps of processing natural gas liquids were improved through studying complex distillation arrangements, including the double dividing wall column arrangement (DDWC), the sequence including a dividing wall column (DWC) and a bottom DWC (BDWC), and the sequence including a DWC and a BDWC with top vapor recompression heat pump. These arrangements offer benefits by decreasing reboiler and condenser power consumption. Reducing the number of columns and their diameters can potentially reduce construction costs. The result also showed that operating cost could be reduced most significantly through novel combinations of internal and external heat integration: bottom dividing wall columns employing a top vapor recompression heat pump.