Increasing St.Fergus Gas plant capacity and reliability using Rosenberg gas/solid separation technology

The St. Fergus Gas Plant, a critical infrastructure hub in the UK’s natural gas network, sought to increase operational capacity and improve system reliability using Rosenbergs Gas/Solid Separation Technology. One of the key challenges involved handling solid contaminants in gas streams, which were causing performance drops, maintenance issues, and increased pressure loss across existing filtration units on the MEG gas processing train.

The purpose of the St Fergus Gas Dehydration Unit is to remove the residual water content (60 to 80ppm vol) from the hydrocarbon vapour stream leaving Gas Liquid Separator to prevent the formation of gas hydrates or freeze-ups occurring in the low temperature downstream equipment, the water is removed from the vapour stream to less than 1ppm by a process of molecular sieve adsorption. In order to limit gaseous glycol carryover vessels are also loaded with a layer of silica gel beneath the molecular sieve.
Before passing the dry gas to cryogenic cooling (methane stripping) it must be passed through existing Filtration systems to remove any molecular fines and particles > 1.0 micron.
Contamination of this sort can contribute to internal erosion and fouling of downstream equipment.

To address this, Rosenberg suggested ito implement an advanced Gas/Solid Separation solution, aimed at optimizing throughput while maintaining strict process safety and efficiency standards.