When it comes to processing sour gas most operators would agree that the amines process is the "workhorse " of the gas processing industry.Today the experience,reliability and ready availability of low cost amines is the key to implementing sour gas treatment projects that will be cost effective to make on specification sales gas for many traditional sour gas treatment applications:purifying natural gas for LNG feed selective removal of H_2S with a maximum slippage of CO_2 bulk removal of acid gas for re-injection This paper presents a review of the secondary DEA and tertiary MDEA amines process technologies with a renewed look to acid gas removal performance and energy efficiency.The impressive "know-how" wealth accumulated by Total(formerly TotalFinaElf)via past achievements of Elf(formerly SNPA)has established a benchmark for the amines technology.Higher amine concentrations with proven corrosion free applications based on good engineering design lead to lower solvent circulation rate and costs.Use of additives called "energizers" with MDEA allows bulk CO_2 removal with all the added benefits of using MDEA.On the other-hand use of proprietary contacting devices and other design features allow MDEA to offer maximum slippage of CO_2.Finally to culminate the new look,a novel MDEA process is presented which is shown to achieve simultaneous selective complete H_2S removal and dehydration eliminating the traditional glycol dehydration process usually following the amine unit and thus extending the industry "workhorse" to new product quality specification limits.
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