Overview
Natural gas plays an important role in the energy transition. Our passion and commitment to gas purification put our technologies, which incorporate decades of improvements and industrial experience, at the forefront of this modern era.
Baker Hughes provides customized engineering solutions in the field of natural gas processing, based on proven and reliable technologies.
Gas liquid separation
This primary step of each oil and gas process unit has the important purpose of segregating liquid and gas streams for further processing or recovery, or to protect the process media and equipment treating the process gas.
Gas dehydration
This is a fundamental step in nearly all gas processing units to prevent hydrate formation in high-pressure natural gases during transmission or cryogenic processing (such as LPG/NGL recovery or in LNGs). Dehydration is also applied to prevent corrosion from condensed water in sour gas streams.
Dew point control
For safe transportation and use of natural gases, water and hydrocarbon dew points must be controlled. Depending on market specifications, the typical natural gas dew points range from -5ºC to -20ºC as water, and from 0ºC to -10ºC as hydrocarbons—while lower values can be required for subsea pipeline transportation.
NGL/LPG recovery
Recovery of natural gas liquids (NGL) and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) is typically achieved through cryogenic processing, with temperatures as low as -80ºC (NGLs) or -100ºC (high efficiency C2 recovery). Cryogenic processing requires proper gas dehydration which, for lower temperatures, is normally achieved by molecular sieves.
LNG pre-treatment
In LNG units, the natural gas is liquefied by cooling to obtain a more easily transportable product. The process must remove all impurities contained in raw feed gas that could lead to off-spec LNG quality (H2S and sulfur), plugging of cryogenic equipment (CO2, water, heavy hydrocarbons), or corrosion of cryogenic equipment (mercury).