We recently visited a gas plant whose ethane recoveries were suffering. The plant personnel said they knew what the problem was and that was lack of refrigeration compression. Add another refrig compressor and the problem would be solved. We went ahead and collected plant data and did our evaluation only to find out that the Gas/Gas exchanger was performing very poorly. This exchanger is upstream of the chiller and was causing the inlet temperature going into the chiller to be much higher than it should be and the result with the existing refrig compression was the outlet temperature was also warmer. Our simulations showed that if the Gas/Gas exchanger was “fixed” that there was plenty of refrig compression to achieve good recoveries. Even if they have to go so far as to replace the Gas/Gas exchanger it is significantly cheaper than adding a refrig compressor. Adding value is what we like to do.
