Offshore oil reservoirs often also contain gas, which is produced with the oil. However, the infrastructure requirements for gas storage, processing and transportation make it uneconomical to recover the gas on remote offshore platforms. Typically there is limited space on the platform for equipment and/or the platform is too far offshore for a pipeline.
As such, the gas is flared, re-injected to another reservoir, and used for utilities on the platform. The flaring of gas produces greenhouse gases, nitrogen/sulphur organics and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), which are emitted to the marine environment. Removal of the heavier compounds from the gas can greatly reduce these emissions.
In addition, the removal of these contaminants can improve the performance of the flare and storage/transportation options such as compressed natural gas and liquefied natural gas. The focus of this research is to analyze and model technologies to remove the constituents from the gas stream (heavier hydrocarbons and contaminants) to both decrease the toxicity of the gas if it is flared and to increase the efficiency of proposed transportation methods.
