Acid gas removal by amine solvents : bridges between CO2 capture and natural gas treatment

J. Kittel (1) , Elisabeth Fleury (1) , Serge Gonzalez (1) , Francois Ropital (1)

1 IFPEN - IFP Energies nouvelles

In the oil and gas industry, acid gas removal is required for the treatment of natural gas. New applications were also recently pushed forward for CO 2 capture from the flue gas of power plants. For both applications, the most widespread industrial processes use absorption-desorption by an alkanolamine solvent. In such amine units for acid gas removal, corrosion represents an important operational concern. The aim of this paper is to review some of the parameters influencing the corrosivity of amine solvents. In the light of literature data and of new experimental results, the influences of temperature and of acid gas loading are discussed. These two parameters appear to have a strong impact on corrosion rates of carbon steel, with extrapolated corrosion rates of several tens of mm/year for the highest temperature and acid gas loading condition. It is then proposed to discuss about similarities and differences between natural gas processing and CO 2 capture from flue gas. For both applications, alkanolamine processes are used. Still, differences can be found in operating parameters. The most significant gap concerns the lean amine sections. In acid gas treatment, the regeneration of the solvent is often performed down to zero loading. Under these conditions, an extremely low corrosivity of the lean solvent is expected. On the contrary, CO 2 capture from flue gas requires only a partial stripping of the CO 2 in the regeneration section, due to energy efficiency reasons. Then, the lean solvent still contains some acid gas, and subsequently a higher corrosivity.

Domaines: Matériaux

J. Kittel, Elisabeth Fleury, Serge Gonzalez, Francois Ropital. Acid gas removal by amine solvents : bridges between CO2 capture and natural gas treatment. Eurocorr 2010, Sep 2010, Moscou, Russia. ⟨hal-02475484⟩