Title: Developing a Proper Design Philosophy for Gas/Liquid Separators (Do's and Don'ts if you want your separator to perform)
Abstract:
Have you heard the terms Gas/Liquid Separator or Liquid/Liquid Separator before? What are these and what are their functions in a gas plant, refinery, or any other part of energy and oil and gas industry? We will answer these questions, but more importantly we need to know how to design and utilize one. Separators, often called “Knockout Pots”, are necessary part of many processes to ensure products are meeting specifications required, environmental requirement are met on produced streams, and operational units and equipment like compressors are working as expected to keep the plant running. So, the main question is: What is the proper design philosophy to design and operate a separator vessel in our plant?
There are various chemical and physical separation processes that are used in oil and gas industry to separate products like gas, oil, water from each other. The most common method is using physical separation techniques by utilizing separator drums equipped with separation devices like inlet diffusers, mist eliminators devices (gas-liquid separation), or coalescers (liquid-liquid separation). These are all working based on the physical properties of gas and liquid phases, streams, and products.
To achieve high-efficiency gas/liquid separation, one must analyze the entire vessel from inlet piping to outlet nozzle. Most designers only focus on the internal equipment like mist eliminator and overlook the other sections of the column. This presentation attempts to describe the basics of some of these separation technologies and develop a proper separator design philosophy using lessons learned from different case studies.
Bio: Babak Rafienia
Babak Rafienia is Chemical Engineer with Master of Science degree specialized in separation and distillation technologies. He has been with AMACS Process Tower Internals for the past 6 years and his focus is currently on product and technology development, training junior engineers, troubleshooting, revamping, and retrofitting separation, and distillation projects globally. Babak is also Excom. and board member of AIChE Management Division (MGMT) and Continuing Education Chair of AIChE South Texas Section (STS). He has chaired multiple session in AIChE conferences, authored technical articles, and has served as judge and award committee member of technical presentations in his field of expertise.
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