Construction of a gas condensate demercaptanization (DMC) unit at the South Pars 2nd Refinery (belonging to phases 2 and 3) is near completion and when inaugurated next March will process 80,000 barrels of gas condensate a day, director of the refinery said.
The project in South Pars for the first time, seeks to reduce the corrosive effects of harmful compounds on refining machinery and equipment, Hossein Baghban said.
Reducing environmental pollutants, upgrading and improving the quality of gas condensate, and increasing added value are the other goals of the key unit, IRNA quoted Baghban as saying.
Not only do DMC units help refineries produce more value-added goods, but also help fight the worsening menace of air pollution by removing impurities like mercaptan, sulfur and other environmentally-unfriendly materials from gas condensates.
DMC increases refining recovery rate and is seen as an integral part of processing gas condensates in modern refineries.
Mercaptans are the organic components of hydrocarbons with sulfur; they also have a bad smell and corrosive properties in pipeline transmission. Therefore, if mercaptans are in high concentration in natural gas, it must be removed to reduce the value to an acceptable limit.
To separate the mercaptans from natural gas in the sweetening plant, normally the Merox process is used.
Demercaptanization increases the refining recovery rate and is an integral part of processing gas condensates in modern refineries
The Merox process is an efficient and economical catalytic process developed for the chemical treatment of LPG and condensate for removal of sulfur present as mercaptans. The process relies on a special catalyst to accelerate the oxidation of mercaptans to disulfides at or near economical product rundown temperature.
The extraction version of the Merox process removes caustic-soluble mercaptans from hydrocarbon feedstocks. For extraction of fuel gas and mercaptans from natural gas, the Merox process can remove virtually all the mercaptans. The extracted mercaptans are catalytically oxidized to disulfides, which are sent for appropriate disposal.
In addition to the DMC unit, a caustic effluent neutralization unit, an ancillary services unit, a new firewater storage tank and an electrical substation has been built as part of the project at the South Pars site.
Similar plans are to be implemented in phases 4, 5, 9 and 10, if the initiative produces the desired results.
South Pars Gas Complex comprises 14 refineries in Southern Iran and processes gas extracted from the giant South Pars Gas Field Iran shares with Qatar in the Persian Gulf.
The field stretches over 9,700 square kilometers, 3,700 square kilometers of which, called South Pars, are in Iran’s territorial waters and the rest, called North Dome, are in the neighboring Arab state.
The field, divided into 24 standard phases on the Iranian side, is estimated to contain almost 8% of the world’s natural gas reserves, and approximately 18 billion barrels of condensate.
According to one report, Iran's recoverable reserves stand at 10 trillion cubic meters Qatar’s over 25 tcm.
All the offshore operations of the development project of the field, except for phase 11, are complete.
Iran has boosted gas production to around 1 billion cubic meters per day, more than two-thirds of which come from South Pars.
