DEA CONVERSION TO MDEA BASED SOLVENT RESULTS INENERGY SAVINGS AND INCREASED TREATING CAPACITY ATTHE ENERGY TRANSFER - LA GRANGE GAS PLANT

摘要

The Energy Transfer La Grange Gas Plant was commissioned in 1982 to produceover 24,000 barrels per day of natural gas liquids (NGL) from 230 MMscfd of naturalgas. With wellhead volumes below historical, in 2003 one of the residue turbinecompressors was converted to inlet boost service, thus reducing the inlet gas capacity tothe current 200 MMscfd. The plant operated for many years using 30 weight %diethanolamine (DEA) to treat the NGL product. In April 2004, a pipe rupture andresulting fire led to the subsequent replacement of some major plant equipment. As theLa Grange plant is one of the main processing assets of the company, it was critical thatthis facility be brought back into operations as quickly as possible. In parallel with initialreconstruction activities, the GAS/SPEC Technology Group of INEOS assisted EnergyTransfer with evaluating the installation of a refurbished amine unit and the replacementof the amine solvent with GAS/SPEC? CS-1 (1). Through the combined efforts of thetwo companies, the new amine unit was put back into operations in July 2004, threemonths after the plant outage. This paper details the design decisions and the timelinefollowed to restart the unit. In addition, the paper will discuss some of the benefitsreaped as a result of equipment and solvent changes.