A computational simulation study for techno-economic comparison of conventional and stripping gas methods for natural gas dehydration

In the present work, the conventional natural gas dehydration method(CDM) and stripping gas method(SGM)are technically and economically analyzed, utilizing Aspen HYSYS and Aspen Process Economic Analyzer(APEA),respectively. To optimize the CDM and SGM, the sensitivities of the water content of dry gas, reboiler duty and raw material loss are analyzed against solvent rate and stripping gas rate. The optimized processes are set to achieve a targeted value of water content in dry gas and analyzed at optimized point. The analysis shows that SGM gives 46% lower TEG feed rate, 42% lower reboiler duty and 99.97% pure regenerated TEG.Moreover, economic analysis reveals that SGM has 38% lower annual operating cost compared to CDM. According to results, from both technical and economic point of view, SGM is more feasible for natural gas dehydration compared to CDM.