Light Hydrocarbon Recovery Process Simulation Studies

Natural gas has been applied extensively in people's life and industrial department as a kind of valuable resources, the recovery of light hydrocarbon in natural gas can increase the whole economic benifit of the natural gas. The low temperature separation with the methods of refrigerating fluid, expander and the conbine of refrigerating fluid&expander together are dominant in light hydrocarbon recovey process technology. The computer simulation technique has great function in improving recovery rate of light hydrocarbon, optimizing the operational parameter and guidancing the technique reforms of light hydrocarbon plant etc.. For these reasons, aiming at the low temperature separate method of light hydrocarbon recovery, the simple and accurate SRK state equation has been used to calculate the component's thermodynamic characters of natural gas. This paper simulates the units process of the light hydrocarbon recovey process such as flow mixer/spilliter, flash, pump, valve, compressor, expander, distillation and heat exchange etc., and give examples to contrast calculation for each unit process. Exploited the calculating software of the light hydrocarbon recovery process units, NGpro/1.0, and elucidated the software based on the simulation of unit process. At the same time, simplely discuss the basic problem of light hydrocarbon recovery process simulation such as establishing and resulting the construction model, system model and so on, and found the system simulation groundwork for futher study. The paper simulates the whole process of one light hydrocarbon recovery pant and gives out the main simulation process and simulation results.