Process Design Aspects of a Large Scale Onshore Gas Terminal
A growing demand for LNG in the USA, Europe, China and Japan, together with an increasing view that natural gas presents a major medium term option to meet current and growing electrical power demand in light of its improved efficiency and reduced environmental impacts over coal and oil fired power stations, has been a driver for a series of mega gas plant projects around the world. These projects are characterised by offshore gas fields located beyond the continental shelf in water depths greater than 1km, suppling raw gas via sub sea completions and pipeline systems to an onshore terminal, which in turn is remotely located from the gas end user. While the onshore facilities consist often of relatively simple processing schemes, certainly upstream of LNG facilities, design of these plants still presents a challenge for Process engineers due to their high operating pressures and large inventories of flammable gas. Design of the onshore facilities includes consideration of the configuration of process steps required to produce specification sales gas from the design basis raw gas, plant overpressure protection including protection against supplying well head shut-in, liquids disposal and flare system configuration including minimum metal temperatures to which equipment and piping may be subjected during blowdown. This paper discusses the Process engineering input to the Front End Engineering Design (FEED) phase of such a large scale onshore gas terminal servicing an offshore gas field and delivering gas to users via a major gas transmission system.
