Using HYSYS To Check Sales Gas Specs
Using HYSYS To Check Sales Gas Specs
Holoboff
A process engineer supporting gas operations will often need to use HYSYS to calculate sales
gas properties such as water dewpoint, hydrocarbon dewpoint, heating value and water
content.
Sales gas specifications vary by region and by recipient; these are typical gas specifications in
Alberta, Canada.
HYSYS is well-suited to calculate these properties - in particular much work has gone into
fitting the Peng Robinson equation of state interaction parameters for standard gas operations.
Calculating Dewpoints
Most HYSYS users know that a stream dewpoint can be calculated by setting the vapour
fraction to 1. However, this calculation does not differentiate between a hydrocarbon or water
dewpoint (unless you look at the incipient phase).
Here are two ways to easily calculate hydrocarbon and water dewpoints in HYSYS:
If you wish to calculate a dewpoint at a pressure which is different than (e.g.) the sales gas
pressure, we recommend using a Balance operation to transfer the composition to a new
stream, and then specify a new pressure in that stream.
Pitfalls of Dewpoint prediction
Usually, HYSYS does a reasonable job calculating stream dewpoints. However, there are
some pitfalls to watch out for:
Streams which have small amounts of TEG (e.g., dry gas from a TEG contactor) can
predict an incorrect dewpoint. We recommend one of the following:
o use a component splitter to remove all TEG from the dry gas, and then
calculate the dewpoint
o use a different property package for TEG dehydration/regeneration which
includes the component TEG. When the dry gas leaves the TEG subflowsheet,
it should transfer to the main flowsheet property package which does not
contain TEG. All TEG is therefore removed at the flowsheet boundary, and
the dewpoint can be calculated in the main flowsheet.
Be careful when comparing stream dewpoints to those calculated by the envelope
utility. By default, the envelope utility is constructed on a dry basis and therefore the
dewpoint line corresponds to the hydrocarbon dewpoint. Note that in recent versions
of HYSYS a "COM Thermo Three-Phase" envelope can be plotted which shows both
the water and hydrocarbon dewpoint lines.
Hydrocarbon dewpoint calculations are very sensitive to trace amounts of heavier
hydrocarbons.
The hydrocarbon dewpoint for an analysis which shows an amount of "C7+" can have
a very different dewpoint depending on whether the heaviest component is assumed to
be (e.g.) n-C7 or n-C10.
One should be aware of the maximum pressure for the phase envelope (cricondenbar).
In the supercritical (dense phase) region, the concept of a dewpoint is not applicable.
However, it should be noted that HYSYS may apply a vapour fraction of 0 or 1 in the
supercritical region as an indication of which correlations are being used for the
stream.
As with the dewpoints, water content can be calculated in HYSYS using the "Gas Properties"
extension or by adding the corresponding gas property correlation to a HYSYS stream. The
Gas Properties extension calculates the water content in two sets of units (lb/MMSCF and
mg/m3) while the stream correlation only calculates the water content in mg/m3.
Alternatively you could set up a spreadsheet calculation in HYSYS to calculate water content
in lb/MMSCF units by importing the water mass flowrate and stream flowrate in MMSCFD.
Higher and Lower heating values can be calculated using the "Gas Properties" extension or
by adding the corresponding gas property correlation to a HYSYS stream. Results are usually
very similar for typical gas analyses but may differ in some cases due to treatment of "non-
standard" components.