Zeolite and Active Carbon as Contacting Media for CO 2 Removal: Case study - CO 2 Removal of Produced Gas at PT Pertamina EP Asset XY

Abstract

The carbon dioxide is a common impurity to the natural gas production which causing equipment failures due to corrosion and natural gas calorific content decreased. Gathering Station of PT Pertamina EP Asset XY has significant carbon dioxide concentration on its natural gas production. However, installing an amine unit is not an option due to low operating pressures and cost of compression process. This study investigates stripping process of CO2 gas saturated on a gas well stream production through absorbent contacting mechanism with a laboratory-scale of contacting column tower that contains zeolite and activated carbon under ambient condition. In this study, carbon dioxide filtering process was carried out with three prototype models. Horizontally layered column, vertically inserted tubing column and horizontally layered column packed with active carbon. The first model is a Poly Vinyl Chloride (PVC) column tower with four stratified trays where each level has packed 250 grams of zeolite. The second model is a tubular PVC column contains 8 inserted small tubing where each of tubing was poured with a zeolite 250 grams capacity. Meanwhile, the third model is similar with first model, however, each tray level contains as much as 250 grams of activated carbon. The effluent gas from diesel and gasoline combustion engines were used as samples due to global pandemic condition. The result as follows: CO2 level decreased 0.9-1.0 percent for prototype model I and 0.8-0.9% for the model II. The third model has significance impact reduces smoke concentration on effluent gas from diesel combustion engine. The study shows significance role of zeolite to be determined as CO2 removal in sour gas on oil and gas production.