The term “gas processing” is used to refer to the removing of ethane, propane, butane, and heavier components from a gas stream. They may be fractionated and sold as “pure” components, or they may be combined and sold as a natural gas liquids mix, or NGL. The first step in a gas processing plant is… Read More »
An important variable that determines the size of a given desiccant bed is the relative saturation of the inlet gas. This variable is the driving force that affects the transfer of water to the adsorbent. If saturated gas (100% relative humidity) is being dried, higher useful capacities can be expected for most desiccants than when… Read More »
Towers are sized for a design pressure drop of about 5 psi through the desiccant. The pressure drop can be estimated by: Pressure drops of greater than approximately 8 psi are not recommended.
In its simplest form, an adsorber is normally a cylindrical tower filled with a solid desiccant. The depth of the desiccant may vary from a few feet to 30 ft or more. The vessel diameter may be from a few inches to 10 or 15 ft. A bed height to diameter (L/D) ratio of higher… Read More »
Generally, as the gas velocity during the drying cycle decreases, the ability of the desiccant to dehydrate the gas increases. At lower actual velocities, drier effluent gases will be obtained. Consequently, it would seem desirable to operate at minimum velocities to fully use the desiccant. However, low velocities require towers with large cross-sectional areas to… Read More »
Most adsorbers operate on a fixed drying cycle time and, frequently, the cycle time is set for the worst conditions. However, the adsorbent capacity is not a fixed value; it declines with usage. For the first few months of operation, a new desiccant has a very high capacity for water removal. If a moisture analyzer… Read More »
Generally, the adsorption capacity of a dry bed unit decreases as the pressure is lowered. If the dehydrators are operated well below the design pressure, the desiccant will have to work harder to remove the water and to maintain the desired effluent dew point. With the same volume of incoming gas, the increased gas velocity,… Read More »
Adsorption plant operation is very sensitive to the temperature of the incoming gas. Generally, the adsorption efficiency decreases as the temperature increases. The temperature of the regeneration gas that commingles with the incoming wet gas ahead of the dehydrators is also important. If the temperature of these two gas streams differs more than 15°F to… Read More »
For each component in the inlet gas stream, there will be a section of bed depth, from top to bottom, where the desiccant is saturated with that component and where the desiccant below is just starting to adsorb that component. The depth of bed from saturation to initial adsorption is known as the mass transfer… Read More »
Multiple desiccant beds are used in cyclic operation to dry the gas on a continuous basis. The number and arrangement of the desiccant beds may vary from two towers, adsorbing alternately, to many towers. Three separate functions or cycles must alternately be performed in each dehydrator. They are an adsorbing or gas drying cycle, a… Read More »