Natural gas cleanup: A comparison of membrane and amine treatment processes

Gas membrane separation plays an increasing role in many modern industrial processes and often offers significant advantages for natural gas treatment applications. Foremost of these applications is acid gas removal or gas sweetening, which until recently has been handled by conventional amine treatment, cryogenic fractionation, or solid adsorbents. This paper provides an economic comparison of membrane and amine processing to help determine when installation of membranes may be advantageous. State-of-the-art membrane technology and innovative configuration and optimization of both the membrane and amine systems have been evaluated.