Integration of Reforming and CO2 Removal Processes in a Gas-to-Liquid Plant

Abstract

In the current era of high energy prices and environmental issues, extensive research is being done to convert natural gas to useful products. For this purpose, the GTL (gas-to-liquid) process is considered an effective process which can produce high quality liquid petroleum products. However, the greenhouse gases produced in the reforming section contribute to global warming which makes the carbon dioxide capture process inevitable. In this work, a reformer reactor is used to produce the syngas, with H-2/CO mole ratio of 2, and the reforming process is integrated with the solvent based carbon dioxide capture process. Moreover, the conventional design exhibits enormous energy requirements due to the high energy demand in the reformer and solvent regenerator column. Heat integration and the heat transfer process offer an outline to reduce the energy load of the process. Therefore, different configurations are proposed by modifying the flow sheet, and heat integrations are applied to optimize the total heat duties. The optimized configurations ensure remarkable savings. All the proposed configurations are rigorously simulated by using Aspen HYSYS v 8.8. Economic analysis is also carried out for a comprehensive comparison which unveils the most optimum design configuration with minimum raw material and operating cost.