Natural Gas Liquid (NGL) recovery is an inherent part of most Liquefied Natural Gas(LNG) production trains. The requirement serves many purposes, such as adjusting theheating value of the product LNG, mitigating the freezing risks caused by specificintermediate and heavy components, and enhancing economic returns by selling NGLseparately. In recent years attention has been paid to enhance the overall plantefficiency by integrating the refrigeration requirements of LNG and NGL sections.This paper shows different heating value specifications in different regions of the world.Therefore, an LNG plant may be required to produce different grades of LNG productsto meet the market demands. An ideal design of NGL facilities should be sufficientlyflexible to allow operators to adjust the level of NGL recovery. In other words, operatorscan recover the maximum amount of NGL for sales or leave the LPG components(propane and butane) in the LNG to maximize its heating value.This paper also presents these NGL technologies which have been proven andimplemented in existing LNG plants. The NGL process configurations are classified intoseveral categories and discussed. Additionally, the paper uses a traditional scrubcolumn as an example to highlight the process parameters available to operators forregulating the levels of NGL recovery.
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