One of the main processing steps in natural gas processing is dehydration. This has been identified by our industry partners as a major challenge, in order to prevent hydrate formation, slug flow, corrosion and erosion in pipes and process equipment.

The objective for this project is to evaluate a new membrane process design for subsea natural gas dehydration to reach pipeline transport specifications. To evaluate the membrane dehydration process, modelling and process simulation will be conducted. The two membrane modules will be modelled and verified before they are implemented into the simulation tool HYSYS for an overall process design evaluation and optimization.With a verified and optimized process simulation model, a feasibility study of the membrane dehydration process can be reported.

With subsea dehydration, no water will be present in downstream gas pipelines and process equipment,
which gives several advantages: Problems connected to multiphase
transport will be removed and there is no need for other mitigation techniques as continuous injection of prevention chemicals like Mono-ethylene glycol (MEG). In addition, dehydration in an earlier processing stage will reduce the cost and complexity of the downstream equipment.