CO2 emission reduction by zero flaring startup in gas refinery

Abstract

Gas refinery is one of the large emitter of carbon emissions in the world. Flaring of gases in the open atmosphere, in addition to economic losses, increase the CO2 emission significantly. Some methods are presented in the literature for reducing the normal flare while about 60% of total flare in a gas plant is related to the gases flared during the plant start-up after an emergency or normal shutdown. In this work, a new approach is proposed to reduce gas burning in a flare at the phases 2 & 3 of South Pars gas refinery by zero flaring in the start-up of the plant. Histories were reviewed, the conditions were simulated, and the bottlenecks were determined. The operational solution was detected and field test is carried out. In result of this work, total flared gas was reduced from 190 to 31 million metric standard cubic meter per day (MMSCMD). Also, the level of CO2 emission decreased from 380,000 to 63,000 ton and totally, greenhouse gas emissions dropped by more than 700%.

Keywords

• CO2 emission
• Zero flaring
• Start-up
• Gas refinery
• Optimization