Natural Gas Processing
Shell Catalysts & Technologies helps you meet gas composition specifications using amine gas treatment technologies and processes. Remove CO2, COS, H2S, and other sulphur compounds effectively, and stay ahead of regulatory restrictions and increasingly sour natural gas resources.
Shell Catalysts & Technologies can draw on experience from the entire gas treating process from reservoir to market. Shell鈥檚 100 years of expertise in natural gas processing and gas treating technology helps resource owners by providing reliable, easy to operate, economically attractive line-ups that are environmentally responsible.
The first step in natural gas processing is to separate the raw natural gas from the water and condensate. Second, the contaminants, which include hydrogen sulphide (H2S), carbon dioxide (CO2), mercaptans, carbonyl sulphide (COS) and mercury, must be removed.
Robust gas processing equipment designs are an important enabler of any gas treating facility. However, if the design is not adequate, the operator can encounter significant operational issues.
Integration is key. For instance, Shell鈥檚 gas processing designs are integrated with the downstream gas treating and sulphur recovery blocks. This provides substantial opportunities for integration and, therefore, optimisation. Customers can, therefore, benefit from reduced operating costs and decreased capital expenditure.
Moreover, because these designs leverage Shell affiliates鈥� owner-operator experience, additional benefits may include increased reliability, enhanced operability; and improved safety.
For over 60 years Shell licenses these technologies, enabling other oil and gas operators to safely and economically deliver on specification gas to consumers all over the globe. In the process, our technologies are continuously improving and evolving to meet the challenges of today and into the future.
Integrated Equipment Design, to Enable Flawless Start Up
Shell鈥檚 proprietary high-capacity internals can be used to reduce equipment size or to de-bottleneck existing units. Our innovative condensate stabiliser designs can be used to create a robust operating unit with a wide operating window. They also enable the efficient processing of lower quality condensate and can help to prepare for a flawless operational start-up of the gas processing unit. This is achieved by integrating the gas processing units with the gas treating plant to reduce equipment requirements. This requires in-depth knowledge of all the interfaces between the process units.
Optimising Natural Gas Processing for Gas Reserves
Since the 1960s, Shell has been producing clean natural gas, which has the smallest carbon footprint among traditional fossil fuels. Clean natural gas will remain a critical part of the energy mix throughout the energy transition.
Natural gas reserves contain a number of contaminants that need to be removed before it can be provided to users in the form of clean pipeline gas, or LNG. These contaminants, which are mostly sulphur in the form of H2S and other organic sulphur compounds, as well as CO2, vary widely in concentration across the globe.
As an operator, innovator, and licensor of amine-based gas treating technologies, we have developed complete treating solutions from our experience working with the full range of gas compositions.
We work with operators to optimise the treating solution for a specific gas reserve to ensure that it requires the minimum capex, energy, emissions, and CO2 footprint to bring clean, affordable gas to communities.
Sometimes, more than one type of amine gas treating system is required to clean the gas effectively. Shell鈥檚 extensive and unique experience enables us to understand how to further integrate these processes to significantly reduce capex and energy consumption.
Our Sulfinol and ADIP gas treating technology portfolio provides gas producers with an optimal treating solution, while our SCOT ULTRA and Thiopaq technologies enable the effective conversion of the removed H2S to elemental sulphur for further use in sulphuric acid and fertiliser production, two vital commodities. In total, we have designed over 1,200 gas processing units to date.
