(53y) Resolve Blackpowder in Sales Gas with  Environmental Freindly Self Cleaning Filtration

Yanbu refinery of Saudi Aramco implemented ethane to sales gas conversion project for availing Ethane stream to petrochemical industry. However, sales gas had known black powder concerns associated with sales gas. Our industry is technology-intensive and we explored a new filtration technology “wringing separator filter” as an adoptive organization to overcome industry challenge to economically eliminate black powder, from sales gas network.

Black Powder can be created by either chemical or microbial processes. In addition to water, the presence of oxygen, hydrogen sulfide, and carbon dioxide have all been linked to creating favourable conditions for corrosion of the ferrous steel pipe. Natural gas that often meets stringent composition requirements with as low as 1 ppm of H2S can lead to high levels of corrosion. The major components of these reactions are iron sulfide (Fe + S) and iron oxide (Fe + O).

The Wringing Separator is a system used to separate very small particles from a gas stream and it is not a cyclonic, neither a cartridge nor a centrifugal type. The operating principle of the Wringing separator is completely new, based on the use of the boundary layer current generated by the main flow along the walls of a spiral duct. This current is maintained strictly adherent to the walls of the duct lapped by the gas flow.

This filter was preferred over conventional filtration system which are used in most of industries to meet our objective with minimum solid waste generation which in line with waste minimization program. Moreover, it provides constant efficiency and facilitate on line cleaning and allow throughput with low pressure drop.

Accordingly, Wringing Separator (WS) was installed in Sales Gas System for the first time in SA, to capture black powder and liquids, thus preventing plugging of burner pilots and control valves in Fuel Gas System.

The filter performance at independent labs, confirmed that it is able to capture particles up to 1Micron with maintaining low pressure drop a cross the filter compare to other conventional filters. Moreover major improvement in fuel gas system reliability was observed by 80 % reduction on fired heaters burner tips cleaning frequency

The technology piloting reduced capital investment cost by 50% apart from low operating cost due to cost avoidance of cartridge replacements. The self-cleaning filter offered lower pressure drop than traditional cyclone and cartridge filter.