Problem: An expansion project for a major West Africa production platform involved the installation of compressors and other equipment to handle a future doubling of gas flow rate, from 150 MMSCFD to 300. A major bottleneck was the platform’s production separator, which was designed for 220 MMSCFD. EDG found the separator’s nozzles and liquid handling capacity to be adequate for the new design flow rates. However, the gas handling area of the separator and its vane pack mist extractor were significantly undersized.
Conventional solutions, such as replacement of the separator with a larger one or installation of a second separator train, were unfeasible due to high cost, lack of available deck space, lack of weight handling capacity and extended shut-in. The project team concluded that effective resolution of the bottleneck problem would require unconventional options involving the latest technology.
Solution: EDG enlisted the services of a supplier specializing in the design and manufacturing of proprietary, high-efficiency oil and gas separation equipment. The supplier was requested to develop a solution that would increase the gas handling capacity while minimizing space and weight requirements and retrofitting of the existing separator. The resulting design consisted of a compact, cyclonic-type separator to be inserted in the separator’s gas outlet piping. The gas outlet device will be capable of removing up to 10 percent entrained liquids from the 300 MMSCFD gas stream, but is small enough to fit on the bed of a one-ton truck. The device, once installed, will be positioned up and out of the way in the gas outlet piping with only a small access platform below it. To enhance the performance of the gas outlet device, another instrument will be attached to the separator’s inlet diverter plate. The internal instrument will distribute the fluid flow evenly throughout the separator, making the most use of the separator’s volume, and will be installed without any cutting or welding on the separator. Total cost of the high-efficiency separation devices, including installation labor and shut-in losses, will be a small fraction of the total cost of the conventional solutions mentioned above.
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