Mercury Removal Units Operation at Front-end Location

Abstract

Mercury is present as elemental mercury in natural gas reservoirs and has to be removed in the natural gas processing plants to protect health, environment and equipment. The mercury removal options are mainly non-regenerative products. The adsorption mechanism is a chemical reaction between mercury and the sulfur of the active phase to form non-hazardous and very stable cinnabar phase.The trend is to implement mercury removal vessels the closest to the production wells to minimize mercury contaminations in natural gas plants. This up-front location implies adsorbents able to remove mercury from high operating pressure water saturated natural gas. Metal sulphide active phase adsorbents have been developed for this purpose. This paper will present examples of commercial application with existing mercury removal solutions to illustrate the benefits available from use of the new technology focused on engineered alumina based products. A case study based on performances comparison with different solutions at up-front locations will be presented.