(97d) Economically Treating Sour Gas from Tight Oil Formations

GT-SPOC – Economically treating sour-gas in the shale plays

In the shale plays, there are pockets of sour gas, or sour associated gas.  Treating this gas to pipeline specifications with amine units gets the gas to pipeline specifications.  However, operators have to deal with the resulting acid gas stream that cannot generally be vented due to permit limits on sulfur emissions.  If the gas is not very sour, sulfur scavengers are the obvious solution, however, as the gas contains more than 0.1 ton/day of sulfur, the treating method of choice is not as clear. 

GT-SPOC offers an alternative to the conventional furnace based "modified Claus" method for sulfur recovery.  The technology is very suitable in the 0.5 – 20 ton/day sulfur production range, which is typical of the sulfur rates we see in the shale plays.

The approach improves upon the Claus process which is used to produce >95% of sulfur around the world, by using a patented catalyst at the front of the plant for SO2 production.  The catalyst utilizes constituents that address typical operator issues relating to heavy hydrocarbon contamination of the gas, start-up and shut-down issues, sour-gas composition variations and turndown.  The presentation will discuss the capital and operating economics, as well as specific technical aspects of the technology that allow modularization, reduced footprint, and a tremendous reduction in capital cost.