FINANCIAL IMPACT OF ACCURATELY MEASURING HYDROCARBON DEW POINT

摘要

Natural gas fired turbines for compressing gas must burn clean fuel as specified by the turbine manufacturer. Failure to do so can significantly increase maintenance and operational costs. Condensate in the pipeline can damage equipment and risk contract violations and shut-ins. Poor analysis techniques or a less than optimum choice of instrumentation will significantly add to the risk associated with the operation. This paper focuses on identifying the costs, risks and major factors that contribute to best practices for measuring the hydrocarbon dew point (HCDP) of the natural gas fuel. Instrumentation is now available that provides reliable, accurate gas quality information upon which good operational decisions can be made. Implementing these best practices of measurement will result in a reduction of operational costs, unplanned shutdowns, turbine damage and potential liability for excessive HCDP and shut-ins. Installed cost is an important consideration in the choice of methods used to measure hydrocarbon dew point. But, even if the installed cost is slightly higher, choosing an accurate method will be shown to be a better value. Less expensive instrumentation techniques may under-report the dew point risking serious turbine damage. An inaccurate instrument choice can also add to the already high parasitic load by over-reporting the dew point temperature which would drive the control system to heat the incoming gas more than necessary. Reliable instrumentation producing an accurate measurement assists in controlling the costs of operating a gas processing plant, a pipeline or turbine compressors/generators as well as and protecting these assets.