Modeling and Simulation of Membrane-based Dehydration System and Economic Comparison with other Natural Gas Dehydration Processes

Process design and simulation of different natural gas dehydration processes including membrane systems، absorption، and adsorption were investigated in the current study and the results of the economic assessments of these processes were compared with each other. The absorption process was simulated by means of Aspen-Hysys and the modeling and simulation of membrane system were implemented by MATLAB. All of the processes were designed to reduce the water content of natural gas to less than 7 lb/MMSCF. According to the results، under assumed operating conditions، the total separation cost of membrane separation system was lower than that of other dehydration processes at low feed flow rates. The difference decreased with increasing feed flow rates followed by a decrease in the total separation costs of absorption and adsorption processes. In addition، under the operating conditions assumed in this study، the membrane systems showed lower total separation costs than the adsorption processes. According to the economic evaluation and optimization of membrane-absorption and membrane-adsorption hybrid processes، the use of membrane system on the upstream of other dehydration processes would result in a significant decrease in total separation costs depending on the operating conditions in each dehydration unit.