US 2014/0275693 A1Published application

Auxiliary acid and sour gas treatment system and method

OwnerDonald Lawrence Zinkinventor

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Abstract

An auxiliary sour gas treatment system for treating a stream of sour gas during a time wherein a primary gas treatment facility is unavailable, malfunctioning, inadequate or inoperable. The auxiliary sour gas treatment system comprises a lean solvent storage system to store an appreciable volume of a regenerable lean solvent available on demand. A scrubber to treat an influent supply of the sour gas by contacting the sour gas and the lean solvent which chemically or physically binds the contaminants in the sour gas resulting in a cleaned gas suitable for disposal or use as a fuel, and the solvent in an enriched state that contains the removed contaminants. The enriched solvent resulting from treatment may be stored indefinitely in a rich solvent storage system and then regenerated at any convenient time and at any convenient rate or place to remove the contaminants from the rich solvent.

Claims33

Dependent claims

A primary sour gas treatment system having a plurality of processing steps, said primary sour gas treatment system being operable for removing one or more contaminants from a supply of sour gas, said one or more contaminants including hydrogen sulfide, said primary gas treatment system comprising an absorber, a regenerator in fluid communication with said absorber, and a volume of a regenerable primary solvent cycling substantially continuously through said absorber and said regenerator,

wherein said supply of sour gas enters said absorber and wherein said regenerable primary solvent in a lean state contacts at least a portion of said supply of sour gas in said absorber and either chemically or physically binds some of said hydrogen sulfide in said regenerable primary solvent thereby resulting in said regenerable primary solvent being in a rich state and a cleaned gas suitable for one of incineration, venting, flaring, and capturing for use as a fuel,
and wherein said primary gas treatment system cycles said regenerable primary solvent in said rich state to said regenerator wherein said regenerator removes said hydrogen sulfide from said regenerable solvent resulting in an enriched sour gas stream suitable for one or more further processing methods and said regenerable primary solvent in said lean state that is cycled back to said absorber,
said primary gas treatment system having a maximum sour gas treatment capacity, said supply of sour gas and said enriched sour gas stream having one or more chemical and material properties, said one or more chemical and material properties having one or more variances, and wherein said primary sour gas treatment system having one or more limits on the capability to treat said one or more variances of said one or more chemical and material properties,
the improvement comprising:
an auxiliary sour gas treatment system in fluid communication with said primary gas treatment system to treat a diverted sour gas stream during a time period when one of said processing steps or said further processing methods are one of:
inoperable due to an utility outage, upset due to start-up, shut-down or malfunction of said primary gas treatment system, insufficient, out of sequence, mismatched, outside regulation limits, and incapable of treating said portion of said diverted sour gas stream due to said one or more variances of one of said chemical and said material properties exceeding said one or more limits on the capability of said primary sour gas treatment system to treat said one or more variances, wherein said diverted sour gas stream comprises one of a portion of said supply of sour gas and a portion of said enriched sour gas stream.

3 more elements

An auxiliary sour gas treatment system operable to treat a stream of a sour gas comprising:

an influent supply of a sour gas, said sour gas comprising one or more contaminants, said contaminants comprising hydrogen sulfide;
a lean solvent storage system for storing a volume of a regenerable solvent in a lean state;
a scrubber in fluid communication with said supply of said sour gas and said lean solvent storage system wherein said scrubber receives said sour gas and said solvent in a lean state upon the occurrence or in anticipation of a triggering event, wherein said solvent in a lean state removes one or more contaminants from said sour gas by one of chemically and physically binding said contaminant in said solvent, thereby resulting in said solvent being in an enriched state and a cleaned gas suitable for one of incineration, venting, flaring, use as a fuel, further refining;
a rich solvent storage system in fluid communication with said scrubber, said rich solvent storage system operable to store said solvent in said enriched state indefinitely during and after treatment of said sour gas in said scrubber until said solvent in said enriched state is to be regenerated.

1 more element

A method for treating a substantially continuous supply of sour gas to a primary gas treatment facility in an auxiliary sour gas treatment system that is in fluid communication with said primary gas treatment facility upon the occurrence of a triggering event, the method comprising:

storing a volume of a regenerable solvent in a lean state in a lean solvent storage system of said auxiliary sour gas treatment system until an occurrence or an anticipation of a triggering event;
diverting at least a portion of a flow of a sour gas supply or a sour gas intermediate flow into a scrubber of said auxiliary sour gas treatment system upon said occurrence or said anticipation of said triggering event;
supplying a flow of a portion of said volume of said regenerable solvent in said lean state into said scrubber upon or in advance of said occurrence of said triggering event;
contacting one or more contaminants in said sour gas supply with said portion of said volume of regenerable solvent in said lean state in said scrubber, said one or more contaminant including hydrogen sulfide;
removing some of said one or more contaminants from said sour gas supply by chemically or physically binding some said one or more contaminants in some of said regenerable solvent thereby producing a scrubbed effluent gas and a portion of said volume of said regenerable solvent in a rich state that includes some of said one or more contaminants chemically or physically bound in said regenerable solvent;
disposing of said cleaned effluent gas;
and
storing said portion of said volume of said regenerable solvent in said rich state in a rich solvent storage system of said auxiliary gas treatment system indefinitely until a time wherein said regenerable solvent in said rich state can be regenerated.

5 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.