Amine gas treating, also known as gas sweetening and acid gas removal, refers to a group of processes that use aqueous solutions of various alkylamines (commonly referred to simply as amines) to remove hydrogen sulfide (H2S) and carbon dioxide (CO2) from gases. It is a common unit process used in refineries, and is also used in petrochemical plants, natural gas processing plants and other industries.
Processes within oil refineries or chemical processing plants that remove hydrogen sulfide and/or mercaptans are commonly referred to as sweetening processes because they result in products which no longer have the sour, foul odors of mercaptans and hydrogen sulfide.
There are many different amines used in gas treating:
- Monoethanolamine (MEA)
- Diethanolamine (DEA)
- Methyldiethanolamine (MDEA)
- Diisopropanolamine (DIPA)
- Aminoethoxyethanol (Diglycolamine) (DGA)
The most commonly used amines in industrial plants are the alkanolamines MEA, DEA, and MDEA.
Amines are also used in many oil refineries to remove sour gases from liquid hydrocarbons such as liquified petroleum gas (LPG).
Read more about Amine Gas Treating: Description of A Typical Amine Treater
Famous quotes containing the words gas and/or treating:
“... when I awake in the middle of the night, since I knew not where I was, I did not even know at first who I was; I only had in the first simplicity the feeling of existing as it must quiver in an animal.... I spent one second above the centuries of civilization, and the confused glimpse of the gas lamps, then of the shirts with turned-down collars, recomposed, little by little, the original lines of my self.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“There is something antique, even, in his style of treating his subject, reminding us that Heroes and Demi-gods, Fates and Furies, still exist; the common man is nothing to him, but after death the hero is apotheosized and has a place in heaven, as in the religion of the Greeks.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)