The natural gas industry in USA is experiencing a large growth with the introduction of unconventional gas and increasing demand for clean energy. The trend in relatively low gas values compared to high oil prices provides significant incentives to extract NGLs. While there has been a flurry of new processing plants planned, the incentive to maximize existing processing capacity and NGL recovery levels has rarely been better. Encana Oil and Gas (USA) recently completed an evaluation of retrofit options to increase the capacity and recovery levels at their Fort Lupton facilities. This paper describes the evaluation and selection of a proprietary Stripping Gas Refrigeration scheme that produces a 20% increase in capacity and 38% increase of ethane recovery without the addition of residue gas compression and/or propane refrigeration.
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