Amine treatment in the oil & gas industry

Amine gas treatment is a process that uses aqueous solutions of various alkylamines (known as amines) to dissolve and remove hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide from the refinery sour gases, producing ‘sweet gas’. This leads to the process being known as ‘gas sweetening’, but it is also known as amine scrubbing, or acid gas removal. A typical style of amine gas treatment is the Girbotol process, which uses an absorber column and a regenerator unit. In the absorber, the amine solution absorbs hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide, converting the sour gas into sweetened gas. The amine solution, now ‘rich’ in hydrogen sulfide, is routed to the regenerator, where the hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide are driven off, known as ‘acid gas’, and the lean amine can be reused in the absorber unit.

KROHNE provides amine treatment instrumentation for flow and level measurement, in the materials and with the certification to meet the chemical resistance requirements needed. These include vortex and ultrasonic meters for both steam, sour gas and acid gas flow measurement, radar interface measurement systems for level control in the reaction vessels, and electromagnetic and variable area flowmeters for water and amine flow measurements.