In doing its fair share to help preserve the environment, Nouri Petrochemical Company in Bushehr Province has signed a contract with the engineering company Namvaran to recover flare gas, managing director of Nouri company said.
“The flare gas recovery project will be completed in a little over two years and cost $48 million,” the National Petrochemical Company news website Nipna quoted Taghi Sanei as saying.
Gas flaring refers to the combustion of associated petroleum gas generated during various processes in oil and gas refineries, and petrochemical plants.
Flare gas recovery is the process of recovering waste gases that would normally be flared, so they can be used as fuel. Among other things, it results in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Flare gas recovery systems are specialized compression packages, which recover and repurpose gasses and emissions, such as methane/LPGs and sulfur dioxide, which would normally be burned during flaring.
Nouri company’s project will recycle heavy compounds from sour gas primarily to reduce environmental pollution by removing toxic sulfur compounds in gases produced in different units of the plant.
It will contribute to productivity and profitability by extracting heavy hydrocarbons in the gas, including liquefied petroleum gas.
In the process sulfur compounds separated from gas will be converted into ammonium sulfate, which is a chemical fertilizer used in the agro sector, in a separate unit.
Nouri Company is one of the largest aromatics manufacturers in the world with annual capacity of 4.5 million tons.
Established in 2007 in, it is a subsidiary of the Persian Gulf Petrochemical Industries Co., the biggest consortium of Iranian petrochemical producers.
The plant's output, which includes paraxylene, orthoxaylene and raffinate, is exported to the Persian Gulf Arab states, India, China and South Korea.
Namvaran Company was founded in 1979 and provides engineering services to oil, gas, petrochemical, mine and metal industries. Since inception it has carried out more than 250 projects in and outside Iran.
Long Way Ahead
The National Iranian Oil Company has reported that gas flaring in oilfields declined 40% in 2019 compared to 2017. Daily gas flaring in 2017 was 50 million cubic meters but dropped to less than 30 mcm in 2019, it said.
Since 2008 Iran has prevented the flaring of 12 billion cubic meters of associated petroleum gases, a source of global warming, NIOC data show.
Despite the considerable decline in two years, Iran is still among the top gas-flaring countries after the US, Russia and Iraq. The waste (30 mcm/d last year) is yet a strong indication that there is still a long way to go.
Collection of APG is an important safety measure at many oil and gas production sites as it also prevents industrial plant equipment from over-pressure and explosion.
Iran has made progress in using flare gas either for power generation or as feed for refineries and petrochemical factories. The government is said to have invested more than $5 billion in related projects.
Global Problem
Global gas flaring increased to 150 billion cubic meters in 2019, the highest level in more than a decade, according to the World Bank.
Gas flaring in fragile or conflict-affected countries climbed from 2018 to 2019, in Syria by 35% and in Venezuela 16%, the global lender said in a report.
The top four gas flaring countries - Russia, Iraq, the United States, and Iran - continue to account for 45% of all global gas flaring, for three years running (2017-2019).
However, gas flaring fell by 10% in the first quarter of 2020, with declines across most of the top 30 gas flaring countries due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which has shut down several refineries across the world due to the reduction in fuel demand.
