Monitoring the Complexities of a Growing Infrastructure

With Shale gas reinvigorating the midstream sector, so has the need to meet the many complexities of this growing infrastructure.

One of them includes Natural-gas processing. This is a complex industrial process designed to clean raw natural gas by separating impurities and various non-methane hydrocarbons and fluids to produce what is known as pipeline quality dry natural gas. But what happens to the waste that is created as result of the cleaning process? It is often dumped into a flare stack, which presents an opportunity for the gas monitoring.

One of our natural gas processing customers wanted to use their waste gas stream to supplement the fuel supply that operates their flare stack. The heating value of the waste gas stream varied over a wide range, very lean at some times and very rich at others. They needed to identify the heating value of the waste stream to determine whether it could be used as a standalone fuel source. The heating value of the waste stream had to be at least 200-250 BTU/scf for complete combustion to occur otherwise assist gas would have be added to the flare. 

This is where an analyzer is necessary. By adding one like the CalorVal BTU Analyzer, they would get a continuous heating value measurement of the varying waste stream.

To find out more details about monitoring the varying waste stream read the case history.