Triethylene Glycol Dehydration of Natural Gas: Evaluation of Mass and Heat Transfer Coefficients in the Case of Absorption and Stripping Structured Packing Towers

Abstract

In the last decades, due to their hydraulic performances, structured packings have become the main internals in TEG dehydration units. However, the available literature correlations for the evaluation of mass and heat transfer coefficients were found inaccurate for this process. In this work, the values of mass transfer coefficients were estimated by minimizing the differences between models predictions and industrial plants data. Results show that, for absorber, the gas overall mass transfer coefficient, Ky, strongly depends on the F factor, while liquid load effect remains relatively low. For the stripper, the volumetric mass transfer coefficient, Kya, was expressed as a function of the F factor and of the liquid load. On absorber heat transfer side, the Nusselt number correlation parameters were estimated using heat transfer coefficient values based on heat balance. The heat flux was found 2.5 times higher than the predictions based on Chilton – Colburn analogy.