Dehydration of natural gas using solid desiccants

Natural gas is an important source of primary energy that, under normal production conditions, is saturated with water vapor. Water vapor increases natural gasesʹ corrosivity, especially when acid gases are present. Several methods can be used to dry natural gas and, in this paper, a solid desiccant dehydrator using silica gel is considered due to its ability to provide extremely low dew points. The design analysis of a two-tower, silica gel dehydration unit to dry one million standard m3 of natural gas per day is presented in this paper and the effects of various operating parameters on the design of the unit are discussed. The study also covers the analysis of energy requirements for the regeneration of the weak desiccant bed based on some simplified assumptions and it is found that the higher the regeneration temperature, the smaller are the required quantities of regeneration gas.