Successful Debottlenecking Of An Existing Mercury Removal Unit In A Natural Gas Plant

Executive summary

• A natural gas operator consulted Axens regarding the following concerns: they could not debottleneck one of their unit due to pressure drop issues with the incumbent competitor’s mercury removal technology, whom was not able to provide appropriate technical support
• The operator selected Axens’ AxTrap^TM 273 mercury removal adsorbent. The high mechanical resistance of Axens product and its proven performance in mercury trapping motivated this choice.
• Axens performed a preliminary study in order to understand the origin of the pressure drop. Thanks to its Basic Design Engineering Experience, Axens improved the internals design and optimized the loading diagram.
• As a result, the operator could debottleneck their unit while still achieving on-spec pressure drop and mercury specifications for more than eight consecutive years.