Simulación y estudio de la captura de CO2 y el sistema de transporte para EOR usando ASPEN HYSYS

TORRES, FABIANA BELÉN; ALE RUIZ, LILIANA; GUTIERREZ, JUAN PABLO; BERTUZZI, MARÍA ALEJANDRA; ERDMANN, ELEONORA

Buenos Aires

Congreso; 11th World Congress of chemical engineering; 2023

Asociación Argentina de Ingenieros Químicos

In recent decades, the world economy has experienced rapid growth due to industrial expansion and technological development accompanied by an increase in energy demand. This situation influences the consumption of conventional fossil fuels like oil and gas as the primary energy source. Therefore, well production and its best use is a topic of interest. The decreasing of the well pressure is a production problem that could be solved with primary, secondary, and even tertiary recovery techniques, which allow the well pressure to increase by reinjecting carbon dioxide (CO2). This technique is known as enhanced oil recovery (EOR). For this purpose, an essential source of CO2 comes from the natural gas sweetening processes. There are different processes for CO2 separation from a source gas. The most used technologies are chemical absorption, physical adsorption in porous solids, separation with membranes, cryogenic separation, and even a combination of these, called hybrid systems. The CO2 is transported through pipes to the well production for EOR to improve the performance production. The pressure required for this purpose is around 100-300 bar and depends on the gas distance and final disposal [1]. Using CO2 for EOR represents an advantage because of improved oil and gas production and also reduces greenhouse gas emissions due to this gas being sent to a well. This work aims to analyze the sweetening process of a natural gas stream with a high concentration of CO2 and the transport of CO2 capture for EOR. This stream corresponds to a typical stream from a reservoir in Neuquén. In this case, cryogenic and membrane technologies are selected to obtain two streams, one rich in CO2 for EOR and the other rich in CH4 for sales gas [2]. In addition to this study, the transport of the CO2 stream to a production well is also analyzed. The simulation of the CO2 capture-transport system is performed using ASPEN HYSYS V12. The first step of the study is to determine the process conditions for CO2 capture. Then an economic and environmental analysis is realized to known economic parameters like CAPEX and OPEX of the process and the greenhouse gases emitted by the system. In the transport step of the CO2 to the production well is necessary to determine pipe characteristics like length and diameter and the final drop pressure.