(92e) Development of Membranes for Natural Gas Dehydration

Membranes have many potential advantages over conventional technologies for the dehydration of natural gas, including lower methane and hydrocarbon loss, lower energy consumption, reduced maintenance costs due to fewer components, no spent glycol/ mole-sieve/ deliquescent wastes, amenability to unmanned operation, smaller footprints, lighter weight packages, minimal electrical power duty, and amenability to expansion due to system modularity. However most commercially available membranes for natural gas upgrading involve high capital cost and methane loss and performance degradation from operational upsets, which are barriers to their widespread adoption by the industry. Promising leads for a new polymeric membrane which can enable superior, robust, low-cost separator systems have been developed. Predicted system size and weight, capex, and opex for several membrane process schemes will be presented. These will be compared versus technical and commercial requirements for success compiled from interviews with several oil and gas companies.