SOUR NATURAL-GAS AND LIQUID EQUATION OF STATE

The major gaseous impurities in the subquality natural gas sources are acidic components, such as hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide. Considering that H2S easily dissociates into hydrogen and elemental sulfur, thermodynamic properties and specially phase equilibria of liquid and gaseous systems containing hydrogen, hydrogen sulfide, carbon dioxide, other acidic components, and light hydrocarbons are of much interest to the natural gas and gas condensate production industries. In this paper we report the development of a simple and accurate cubic equation of state for prediction of thermodynamic properties and phase behavior of sour natural gas and liquid mixtures. This cubic equation of state, which is based on statistical mechanical theoretical grounds, is applied to pure fluids as well as mixtures with quite accurate results. All the thermodynamic property relations of sour gaseous and liquid mixtures are derived and reported in this report. Parameters of this equation of state are derived for different components of sour natural gas systems. The resulting equation of state is tested for phase behavior and other thermodynamic properties of simulated and natural sour gas mixtures. It is shown that the proposed equation of state is simple and predicts the properties of interest with ease and accuracy.