Novel acid gas removal process based on self-heat recuperation technology

Chemical absorption is the most common technology used in the acid gas removal unit (AGRU) for treating natural gas. On the other hand, the regenerator requiring large amounts of energy needed for the latent heat of a phase change makes this an energy intensive process. In this study, several distillation columns with a modified heat circulation module based on self-heat recuperation technology were proposed to enhance the energy efficiency of the AGRU. This innovative self-heat recuperation technology circulates the latent and sensible heat in the thermal process. All simulations were conducted using ASPEN HYSYS V8.6, while KG-TOWER® software was employed to size all the columns. The results showed that the proposed modified configuration can save up 62.5% and 45.9% in terms of the reboiler duty and operating cost, respectively, compared to a conventional AGRU. This brought a saving of 38.0% in terms of the total annual cost. The results also indicated that the carbon emissions could be saved up to 45.4%. The proposed process can be employed to both close-boiling mixtures and wide-boiling mixtures. In addition, a sensitive analysis of the utility costs on the performance of the suggested AGRU configuration were investigated. The retrofit an existing acid gas removal process was performed to enhance both the energy efficiency and capacity.