Looking for gas scrubber to clean Nitrogen out of my Gas well so I can sell the Gas.?

Question

Hi! I am looking for a individual gas well scrubber to remove nitrogen out of it. I have several wells producing 100k to 1,000k cubit feet of gas but can not sell do to high nitrogen content. Can anyone help?

Answer 1

You can scrub CO2 because it is reactive with a lot of things, like amines which is a reversible reaction so you can keep reusing the amines.

You can't scrub N2 because it is so nonreactive. A molecular sieve would work. Such as some zeolite with the right pore size undergoing a pressure-swing cycle.

Or membrane separation - like the ones that enrich oxygen for home health care or that deoxygenate air (i.e. enrich nitrogen) for grain silo use.

Or you run a refrigeration cycle. Condense the methane (-164C at 1 atm) versus -196 C for N2. Plenty of difference in their BPs to get a great separation without a huge distillation column, but that is dang cold.

Shooting from the hip, I'd rule out cyro-separation (cooling and distillation) right off. Between molecular sieve and membrane, I suspect membrane would come out ahead. Lower pressue requirements and higher volume flow rates from a given sized unit.

Note that while cyroseparation is well developed and mature as a technology, sieves and mebranes are improving faster. And natural gas prices are only going up. So if you can sit on the investment a while, developing it will only get better from a return-on-investment perspective.

Answer 2

You are going to need a process other than a scrubber to remove nitrogen from a gas stream. There might be a molecular sieve that would work, otherwise you will need a chemical process or a refrigeration process to do the job.

Try: www.netl.doe.gov/publications/proceedings/97/97ng/ng97_pdf/NGP10.PDF

also try a web search for nitrogen removal

Answer 3

Try cooling or centrifuging.