A Review on the Use of Natural Gas Purification Processes to Enhance Natural Gas Utilization

Abstract

The necessity for the adoption of clean and sustainable energy sources that would result in the diversification of Nigeria's energy mix has arisen as a result of the significant area of concern surrounding climate change caused by CO 2 emission. It's interesting to note that Natural Gas (NG), a readily accessible alternative energy source in Nigeria with a wealth of approximately 187 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of proven gas reserves, has remained a crucial part of the energy mix, providing adequate energy with high energy quality and low CO 2 emission. However, natural gas naturally contains some acid gases and small amounts of CO 2, which act as impurities. This has posed a limitation to its effective utilization due to the bottlenecks in pipeline and equipment corrosion during transportation, storage, distribution, etc. To tackle this challenge, numerous researches have been conducted on the purification of natural gas through available technologies, including the cryogenic, membranes, absorption, and adsorption methods. Additionally, the independent use of these technologies has consistently been proven to be less economical and financially demanding with longer purification time, leading to low product recovery and high energy intensity for regeneration in the NG purification processes, which leaves them uniquely challenged. In order to improve natural gas consumption, this study reviews technological techniques in the use of various natural gas purification procedures and hybrid natural gas purification processes. Membranes are used in the purification process for both the gas-absorption and bulk separation of gaseous pollutants. These strategies, created to strike a compromise between the shortcomings of membrane and absorption processes, demonstrated a better separation that contributed to long-term process improvement.