Vapor recovery system
AssigneeConoco Inc.
InventorWillis G. Webb
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
In an oilfield production system, a water driven jet pump is used to evacuate vapors from storage tanks to thereby recover the vapors and prevent emissions from passing to the atmosphere. The jet pump entrains the vapors in process water which is passed to a process separator already in the system. The gas is separated for recovery.
Claims14
In an oil field production facility for collecting hydrocarbon fluids being produced from wells into a facility at the surface wherein produced fluids are initially passed into a production separator where the production fluids are separated into component streams comprised of oil, gas and water for sale or disposal, with the oil and water components being passed into separate storage tanks to await further processing and a gas collection line for passing gas separated from the production fluids, a system for collecting gas vapors from the storage tanks in the facility, comprising;
- vent means on each of the tanks in the system;
- common flowline means in fluid communication with each of said vent means for venting fluids from said tank;
- water flowline means for providing a flow of water under pressure;
- fluid operated jet pump means located in said water flowline and arranged so that said jet pump is operated by the flow of water in said water flowline, said jet pump having a suction inlet for pulling vented fluids into said pump for entrainment into and discharge with the water flowing through said pump;
- and
- means for providing a fluid communication path between said suction inlet and said common flowline to permit vented fluids to pass into said jet pump suction inlet.
A vapor collection system for collecting gases which are being vented from a liquid storage tank in a hydrocarbon processing facility, comprising;
- tank vent means for passing vapors from said liquid storage tank;
- jet pump means having a suction inlet connected to said tank vent means for communicating vapors from said tank to said suction inlet;
- process fluids from said hydrocarbon processing facility for operating said jet pump;
- selectively operable means for providing said process fluids under pressure to said jet pump to selectively operate said jet pump;
- and
- sensing means for sensing a discrete level of vapor pressure in said tank and for activating said selectively operable means in response to-said sensing of said discrete level of vapor pressure.
A method for recovering vapors from liquid storage tanks in a hydrocarbon fluids processing facility including the steps of supplying a hydrocarbon fluids and water mixture to a fluid separation device;
- separating liquid components of the mixture into predominately water and oil streams;
- passing the water and oil streams to separate storage tanks;
- venting gases from the storage tanks using a common vent line;
- communicating the vent line with the suction inlet of a jet pump;
- supplying process fluid under pressure from the process facility to the jet pump for supplying motive fluid to operate the jet pump;
- entraining vented gases from the tanks into the process fluid operating the jet pump;
- and
- passing said process fluid with entrained vented gases from said jet pump.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.