Greetings gentlemen ,
After 5 years of operation of the plant , We have decided to carry on vessel inspection for all equipments in the plant , including Amine sweetening and TEG dehydration ...etc
-TEG system is equipped with stripping gas column , which increased TEG purity up to 99.5%
-TEG contactor is structured packing mellapack 250.Y
-plant is designed to handle 50 mmscfd gas with inlet conditions of 1200ppmv H2S and 8%mole CO2 and the gas outlet specifcations are 3 mol% CO2, 50ppmv H2S and a water content of 24 lb/MMscfd.
However the current conditions are : 12 mmscfd inlet gas with only 250 ppmv H2S and 5%mole CO2 , and the outlet is free of H2S and CO2 and the dew point is very low .
-TEG circulation rate : 19500 lb/hr
-Current TEG samples : purity : 99.08% , PH : 10
-TEG reboiler temperature : 399F reboiler pressure is 8.7Psig , Still column temperature : 213F (Controlled manually) , Still column is random packing to minimize TEG losses.
-Stripping gas in reboiler : 1670.4 ft3/ hr .
-Design inlet gas temperature is 115F after being cooled after Amine sweetening , But currently it's very low (Around 75F)
Inspection scope :
1.TEG samples are constantly higher than PH : 7 , in last samples it has been 10 and when we carried on inspection for the TEG filter (that removes MDEA entrained and gets it back into amine regenerator) it has jumped to PH : 11.2 , Conclusion was that this must be amine getting somehow into TEG system , base on my knowledge , high PH in TEG increased the tendency to foam right ?
Also i was worried that amine would degrade in TEG reboiler and form stable salts and cause corrsion to reboiler bundle
2.TEG losses recently has become huge (around 40 liters/day) During investigation , We reduced stripping gas flow rate since the product gas has very low dew point , We have also made sure that still column head temperature is no more than 213F to reduce any amount of TEG lost this way , after further investigation i have found that the difference in temperature control between Lean TEG and inlet gas setpoint was 44F , and found out that this value has been written in suppler manual 44F as a conversion from 5C , which means it has been converted wrongly and right right value should be 9F , After starting to decrease it gradually it has been noted that losses had decreased alot , then when finally got to 9F losses become at the optimum value
Attached is screenshot of the trends of TEG level in TEG surge drum , the first trend is for when temperature difference is 45F , the top and bottom peaks show the day and night time (At day temperature is high and vise versa) , the 2nd trend is for when it was decreased to 16F , i dont have the 3rd one right now , But after it it became fine .
Problem now is :
After starting being in winter time, inlet gas temperature has reduced from 90F to 75F and sometimes 70F and lean TEG cooler became unable to handle the 9F difference in temperature , temperature difference at night time jumps to 17F , And losses started again , it really made me think ? "Is temperature difference that huge of a factor to determine TEG losses ?" to be honest , I thought it should be something else , and waited until TEG system is opened for vessel inspection to see what's going on
3.TEG system in plant is designed to get 99.5% purity when dealing with 50 mmscfd gas, now it's only 10 mmscfd and TEG is unable to get any close to 99.5% it's around 99.02% all the time , Tried to reduce reboiler presssure to 8psig it helped very little and got 99.1% purity once , but couldnt lower it any more since it will risk us losing more glycol that way
Findings :
1.TEG contactor mist elemenator ( or demister pad as the supplier call it) Was found damage as shown in photos
http://i42.tinypic.com/dvlrw0.jpg
http://i43.tinypic.com/2cz5wle.jpg
http://i42.tinypic.com/11h5n5c.jpg
http://i40.tinypic.com/11h8ils.jpg
2.TEG reboiler & bundle is covered by yellowish material , It looks like if its corroded when you touch it , But i'm not sure yet since we have not made a sample of this matter , Same appears but not as much in TEG surge drum as shown in this photo of the reboiler and bundle :
http://i40.tinypic.com/okor2r.jpg
so my questions are :
1.Could that damage of demister pad be the reason that TEG losses are really high when temperature difference between lean TEG and gas 17F at winter like i described ? i know that mist eleminator is important but is that damage a huge deal ?
2.Do you think that having amine in glycol and its degradation is the reason that TEG reboiler looks this way? What can i do to reduce the PH of TEG or more importantly reduce the amine getting into TEG system ?
Thanks in advance !
Edited by attya, 10 October 2013 - 04:38 PM.