System scale design and mesoscale modeling for natural gas dehydration process

Triethylene glycol (TEG) or mono-ethylene glycol (MEG) absorption are the commercial technologies for natural gas dehydration processes. Nevertheless, the necessity of regenerating solvents under high temperatures results in environmental footprint and complex operation. Membrane with advantages in small footprint and high feasibility operation in hostile conditions is considered as promising technology for natural gas dehydration processes. In this work, system scale design and mesoscale modelling are synchronously adopted to optimize natural dehydration process design. Aspen HYSYS with ChemBrane extension is used for natural gas dehydration process. Taking pressure ration, membrane area and sweep gas flowrate as decision variables for minimizing specific process cost is optimized through NSGA-II algorithms. The minimum specific cost of < 3.06�10-2 $/m3 natural gas is estimated to achieve the separation requirement of <100 ppm. Then, the module length, and membrane thickness of the hollow fiber membrane design is investigated using Computational fluid dynamics (CFD), which better configures the simulation results and concentration, velocity profile to analyze the simulation results. The system scale engineering design and mesoscale modelling provide an in-depth insight into natural gas dehydration process.