A STUDY ON DYNAMIC AND STATIC SIMULATION OF MERCAPTAN ADSORPTION FROM GAS CONDENSATE ON ACTIVATED CARBON

• Main Author: Waskito Widhiandono, Antonius
• Format: Final Project
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/48362
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

Due to the increasing of energy demand of the country, more attempts have been made in Indonesia to find new oil and gas wells. In addition to gas, natural gas wells usually also produce condensate as commercial product. In many fields, high amount of mercaptans impurities are found in condensate and therefore it must be processed first. Adsorption by activated carbon is thought to be one of the feasible methods for the mercaptan separation. However, lack of information about the adsorption model parameters makes the adsorption evaluation to be more difficult. Hence, the study of mercaptan adsorption from condensate model simulation is needed. This research attempted to model adsorption of mercaptan from condensate using activated carbon through static and dynamic studies. Activated carbons that have been used was made of coconut shells and the condensate with impurities were modeled using n-hexane and isopropyl mercaptan. For the static study, concentration of the sample were varied between 400 ppmw – 3500 ppmw. Sulphur concentrations were measured by using sulphur analyzer XOS Petra Max. In the analysis, isotherm models such as Langmuir and Freundlich have been tested with the data to obtain a suitable isotherm adsorption model. For the dynamic study, breakthrough curve has been estimated with the isotherm adsorption model assuming fluid plug flow taking place in the the adsorption column. The analysis continued by observing the effect of varieties of the feed flow, adsorbent bed height, and feed impurities concentration on the breakthrough curve. According to the analysis results, the most appropriate isotherm adsorption model for the static adsorption is the Freundlich model with corresponding values of Kf and n are 0,70 and 1,44, respectively. Feed flow, adsorbent bed height, and feed concentration influenced the breakthrough curve. The larger the feed flow shortened the breakthrough time and increased the mass transfer rate, the LUB, and the MTZ. Higher bed height increased breakthrough time, LUB, MTZ and lowered mass transfer rate. Finally, at higher feed concentration, breakthrough time became shorter while mass transfer rate and LUB became higher but the change of MTZ values were not significant.