Disclosure of Invention
The invention aims to overcome the defects of the prior art and provide a process and a device for extracting high-purity helium in the production process of liquefied natural gas, so that the helium concentration and the hydrogen content reduction in BOG in the LNG production stage are realized, and the safety of the helium purification process is ensured.
The technical scheme of the invention is as follows:
the invention provides a process for extracting high-purity helium in a liquefied natural gas production process, which comprises the following steps of:
extracting BOG (boil off gas) before entering an LNG (liquefied natural gas) storage tank after the raw natural gas subjected to decarburization, dehydration, debenzolization and demercuration purification is cooled and liquefied;
reheating the BOG to normal temperature, pressurizing, performing secondary cooling liquefaction, and separating out a nitrogen and methane mixed liquid material and hydrogen-containing crude helium;
carrying out catalytic dehydrogenation and dehydration on the hydrogen-containing crude helium to obtain crude helium;
removing nitrogen and neon from the crude helium through pressure swing adsorption to obtain high-purity helium;
part of high-purity helium gas is doped into the hydrogen-containing crude helium gas before the catalytic dehydrogenation reaction of the crude helium gas.
Further, the raw material natural gas after decarburization, dehydration, debenzolization and demercuration purification is cooled and liquefied through a primary low-temperature heat exchanger, the temperature of the liquefied raw material natural gas is-157 ℃ to-162 ℃, and the pressure is 1840 kPa;
separating a gas-phase material BOG and a liquid-phase material LNG in the liquefied raw material natural gas through a low-temperature separator, recovering cold energy from the gas-phase material BOG discharged from the low-temperature separator, and reheating, wherein a liquid-phase outlet of the low-temperature separator is connected to an LNG storage tank;
before BOG pressurization and secondary cooling liquefaction, the cooling capacity is recovered by a primary low-temperature heat exchanger for reheating; pressurizing BOG to 4-5 Mpa, and cooling and liquefying with a two-stage low-temperature separator at-191-194 deg.C and 1.8 MPa.
Further, before the liquefied raw material natural gas enters the low-temperature separator, the pressure is adjusted to 150kPa through a first throttle valve.
Further, the high purity helium gas added before the crude helium gas catalytic dehydrogenation reaction reduces the hydrogen content in the catalytic dehydrogenation reaction to below 2%.
The invention also provides a device for extracting high-purity helium gas in the liquefied natural gas production process, which can apply the process, and comprises a first-stage low-temperature heat exchanger, a first throttle valve, a low-temperature separator, a first-stage compressor, a second-stage low-temperature separator, a third throttle valve, a denitrification tower, a catalytic dehydrogenation reactor, a dehydrator, a pressure swing adsorber and a helium gas storage tank which are sequentially arranged on a helium gas extraction path through pipelines;
the gas outlet of the pressure swing adsorber is also communicated with a pure gas pipe, the other end of the pure gas pipe is communicated with a pipeline between the denitrification tower and the catalytic dehydrogenation reactor, and a gas regulating valve and a gas flowmeter are arranged on the pure gas pipe;
the primary low-temperature heat exchanger is used for cooling and liquefying the raw material natural gas subjected to decarburization, dehydration, debenzolization and demercuration purification; the low-temperature separator is used for gas-liquid separation of the liquefied raw material natural gas, and a gas phase outlet of the low-temperature separator is connected to the primary compressor after cold energy and reheat are recovered by the primary low-temperature heat exchanger; the secondary low-temperature separator is used for cooling and liquefying gas-phase materials discharged from the low-temperature separator to obtain a mixed liquid material of nitrogen and methane and crude helium gas containing hydrogen; the denitrification tower is used for separating nitrogen and methane mixed liquid materials in the liquefied gas-phase materials, and a gas-phase outlet of the denitrification tower is connected to the catalytic dehydrogenation reactor; the catalytic dehydrogenation reactor is used for reacting hydrogen in the hydrogen-containing crude helium gas with the metered oxygen to generate water, and the dehydrator is used for dehydrating and discharging the crude helium gas; and adsorbing the impurity gas by the crude helium gas through a pressure swing adsorber to obtain high-purity helium gas, wherein the helium gas storage tank is used for storing the high-purity helium gas.
Further, the temperature of the fluid flowing out after being cooled by the primary low-temperature heat exchanger is-157 ℃ to-162 ℃, the outlet pressure of the primary compressor is 4Mpa to 5Mpa, the temperature of the mixed material flowing out after being cooled by the secondary low-temperature separator is-191 ℃ to-194 ℃, and the pressure of the mixed material is adjusted to 1.8MPa by a third throttle valve before entering the denitrification tower.
Further, the coolant in the secondary low-temperature separator consists of the following components in parts by weight: 20-25% of methane, 30-35% of ethylene, 0-1% of ethane, 4-10% of nitrogen, 10-20% of propane and 3-15% of isopentane.
Further, a liquid phase outlet of the cryogenic separator is connected to an LNG storage tank; the pressure swing adsorber is a double-tower pressure swing adsorption device, the helium storage tank is a high-pressure helium storage tank, a secondary compressor is connected between the pressure swing adsorber and the high-pressure helium storage tank, and high-purity helium obtained by adsorbing miscellaneous gases through the pressure swing adsorber is pressurized by the secondary compressor and then enters the helium storage tank.
Compared with the prior art, the invention has the beneficial effects that:
the process and the device have reasonable design and simple operation, the extraction efficiency of helium is high, and the concentration of finally extracted high-purity helium can reach 99.999 percent;
compared with the traditional method of taking gas from the LNG tank, the BOG is obtained before the raw material natural gas enters the LNG storage tank, so that the content of evaporated methane in the BOG is reduced, the helium concentration is improved, the helium concentration in the BOG is increased by more than two times compared with the original concentration, and the subsequent purification of helium is facilitated; before the catalytic dehydrogenation reaction is carried out, the high-purity helium is used for diluting the hydrogen to be below the explosion limit concentration, so that explosion in the catalytic dehydrogenation reaction is prevented, hydrogen damage of a pipeline caused by the high-concentration hydrogen is prevented, and the purification process is safer;
according to the device, the low-temperature separator for gas-liquid separation is additionally arranged before the raw material natural gas is cooled and liquefied and enters the LNG storage tank, and the BOG is taken from a gas phase outlet of the low-temperature separator, so that the content of methane in the BOG is reduced, and the concentration of helium is improved; the pure gas pipe is additionally arranged, the obtained high-purity helium part after pressure swing adsorption is led back to the front of the catalytic dehydrogenation reactor, and the hydrogen in the crude helium to be reacted is diluted to the position below the explosion limit concentration, so that explosion in the catalytic dehydrogenation reaction is avoided, and meanwhile, the hydrogen damage of the pipeline caused by the high-concentration hydrogen is prevented, so that the device is safe to operate, and the service lives of the pipeline and the device are prolonged.
Detailed Description
The technical solutions in the embodiments of the present invention will be clearly and completely described below with reference to the drawings in the embodiments of the present invention, and it is obvious that the described embodiments are only a part of the embodiments of the present invention, and not all of the embodiments. All other embodiments, which can be derived by a person skilled in the art from the embodiments given herein without making any creative effort, shall fall within the protection scope of the present invention.
The invention provides a process for extracting high-purity helium in a liquefied natural gas production process, which comprises the following steps of:
extracting BOG (boil off gas) before entering an LNG (liquefied natural gas) storage tank after the raw natural gas subjected to decarburization, dehydration, debenzolization and demercuration purification is cooled and liquefied; at the moment, the components in the BOG are methane, neon, nitrogen, hydrogen and helium, wherein the content of the nitrogen, the content of the hydrogen and the content of the helium are respectively 11.4%, 0.93% and 2.8%;
reheating the BOG to normal temperature, pressurizing, performing secondary cooling liquefaction, and separating out a nitrogen and methane mixed liquid material and hydrogen-containing crude helium; the methane and most of nitrogen in the BOG are liquefied and removed after the BOG is cooled and liquefied for the second time; the crude hydrogen-containing helium comprises about 65% of helium and the rest of nitrogen, hydrogen and neon;
carrying out catalytic dehydrogenation and dehydration on the hydrogen-containing crude helium to obtain crude helium; in order to remove the excessive oxygen in the reaction, the crude helium is also subjected to deoxidation treatment; crude helium comprises about 90% helium and the remainder nitrogen and neon;
removing nitrogen and neon from the crude helium through pressure swing adsorption to obtain high-purity helium; performing pressure swing adsorption by using activated carbon and a molecular sieve to finally obtain 99.999% of high-purity helium, and then storing the high-purity helium;
in order to ensure the reaction safety and avoid explosion, part of high-purity helium is doped into the crude helium containing hydrogen before the catalytic dehydrogenation reaction of the crude helium, so that the hydrogen content during the catalytic dehydrogenation reaction is reduced to the explosion limit concentration, namely below 4% volume concentration, and the process safety is ensured.
Furthermore, the high-purity helium gas added before the crude helium gas catalytic dehydrogenation reaction reduces the hydrogen content in the catalytic dehydrogenation reaction to below 2%.
Further, the temperature of the raw material natural gas after decarburization, dehydration, debenzolization and demercuration purification is 20 ℃ to 110 ℃, the raw material natural gas is cooled and liquefied through a primary low-temperature heat exchanger 1, the temperature of the liquefied raw material natural gas is-157 ℃ to 162 ℃, preferably-158 ℃, and the pressure is 1840kPa or so;
the gas-phase material BOG and the liquid-phase material LNG in the liquefied raw natural gas are separated through the low-temperature separator 3, namely the liquefied raw natural gas enters the LNG storage tank and is subjected to gas-liquid separation to obtain the BOG, compared with the method of obtaining gas in the LNG storage tank, the gas is obtained from the low-temperature separator 3, the concentration of helium in the BOG is increased by more than two times compared with the original concentration, and the subsequent purification of the helium is facilitated; adjusting the pressure of the gas-phase material BOG to about 150kPa, maintaining the temperature to about-158.6 ℃, and introducing into a low-temperature separator 3 for gas-liquid separation; a liquid phase outlet of the low-temperature separator 3 is connected to the LNG storage tank, and the liquid phase material LNG separated from the low-temperature separator 3 is collected; the outlet temperature of the cryogenic separator 3 was about-158.2 ℃.
Before BOG pressurization and secondary cooling liquefaction, the BOG is recovered by the primary low-temperature heat exchanger 1 to recover cold energy and reheat the BOG to normal temperature, and the pressure is adjusted to about 140kPa by the second throttle valve 21; then pressurizing the BOG at the normal temperature to 4-5 Mpa, preferably 4.2Mpa, increasing the temperature from the normal temperature to about 162 ℃ due to the volume compression of the gas, then introducing the BOG into a secondary low-temperature separator 5 for secondary cooling liquefaction, reducing the outlet temperature of the secondary low-temperature separator 5 to about-192.3 ℃, reducing the pressure to about 1.8MPa, and additionally, adding cooling equipment to ensure that the material at the temperature of 162 ℃ is cooled for two or more times to reach about-158 ℃ to-163 ℃ and then enters the secondary low-temperature separator 5; the BOG after the secondary cooling liquefaction by the secondary low-temperature separator 5 enters a denitrification tower 6 to remove liquid nitrogen and liquefied methane; the mixture fed into the denitrification tower 6 contains approximately 13% of gas phase components and 87% of liquid phase components, wherein the gas phase components are helium, nitrogen, hydrogen and neon, and the liquid phase components are methane and liquid nitrogen.
Further, if the BOG pressure changes, the pressure of the BOG after the secondary cooling liquefaction is adjusted to about 1.8MPa, and then catalytic dehydrogenation is carried out.
Further, before the liquefied raw natural gas enters the cryogenic separator 3, the pressure is adjusted to 150kPa by the first throttle valve 21.
As shown in fig. 1, the present invention further provides an apparatus for extracting high purity helium gas in the lng production process, which can apply the above process, and comprises a first-stage cryogenic heat exchanger 1, a first throttle valve 21, a cryogenic separator 3, a second valve 22, a first-stage compressor 4, a second-stage cryogenic separator 5, a third throttle valve 23, a denitrifier 6, a catalytic dehydrogenation reactor 7, a dehydrator 8, a pressure swing adsorber 9 and a helium gas storage tank 10, which are sequentially arranged on a helium gas extraction path through pipelines;
the gas outlet of the pressure swing adsorber 9 is also communicated with a pure gas pipe 14, the other end of the pure gas pipe 14 is communicated with a pipeline between the denitrification tower 6 and the catalytic dehydrogenation reactor 7, and the pure gas pipe 14 is provided with a gas regulating valve 12 and a gas flowmeter 11; the high-purity helium gas prepared by the pure gas pipe 14 can dilute the hydrogen gas before the catalytic dehydrogenation reaction, so that the concentration of the hydrogen gas is lower than the explosion limit concentration, and the explosion condition of the hydrogen gas reaction is avoided;
the primary low-temperature heat exchanger 1 is used for cooling and liquefying natural gas which is subjected to decarburization, dehydration, debenzolization and demercuration purification;
the low-temperature separator 3 is used for separating gas and liquid of the liquefied raw natural gas, and a gas-phase outlet of the low-temperature separator 3 recovers cold energy through the primary low-temperature heat exchanger 1 and can also be connected to the primary compressor 4 after being reheated to normal temperature through other heat exchange devices; the primary compressor 4 is used for pressurizing gas-phase materials;
the secondary low-temperature separator is used for cooling and liquefying gas-phase materials discharged from the pressurized low-temperature separator 3 to obtain a nitrogen-methane mixed liquid material and crude helium gas containing hydrogen;
the denitrification tower 6 is used for separating nitrogen and methane mixed liquid materials in the liquefied gas-phase materials, and a gas-phase outlet of the denitrification tower 6 is connected to the catalytic dehydrogenation reactor 7;
the catalytic dehydrogenation reactor 7 is used for reacting hydrogen in hydrogen-containing crude helium with metered oxygen to generate water, the dehydrator 8 is used for dehydrating and discharging the crude helium, the dehydrator 8 can also adsorb redundant oxygen and carbon dioxide generated with methane, and the dehydrator 8 can be a molecular sieve dryer in the prior art;
the crude helium gas is adsorbed by a pressure swing adsorber 9 to obtain high-purity helium gas, wherein the impurity gas is a small amount of nitrogen and neon, the pressure swing adsorber 9 is a double-tower pressure swing adsorption device, and double towers are alternately used, so that the device can continuously work;
the helium storage tank 10 is used for storing high purity helium.
Further, a gas phase outlet of the cryogenic separator 3 is connected back to the primary cryogenic heat exchanger 1 through a pipeline, so that a gas phase part of the cryogenic separator 3 is reheated through the primary cryogenic heat exchanger 1, the device for extracting high-purity helium gas in the liquefied natural gas production process further comprises an air cooler 16 arranged between the compressor 4 and the secondary cryogenic separator 5, and a third throttle valve 23 is arranged on a pipeline between the secondary cryogenic separator 5 and the denitrification tower 6, so that the pressure can be increased or reduced; in the production process of natural gas, raw material gas is subjected to decarburization, dehydration, debenzolization and demercuration purification, the temperature of the raw material natural gas subjected to decarburization, dehydration, debenzolization and demercuration purification is 20-110 ℃, and the raw material natural gas enters the device for helium purification; the temperature of the fluid flowing out after the temperature reduction of the first-stage low-temperature heat exchanger 1 is about-158 ℃, the pressure is about 1840kPa, after gas-liquid separation, the gas phase part in the low-temperature separator 3 is reheated to normal temperature by the first-stage low-temperature heat exchanger 1 and then compressed by the first-stage compressor 4, the pressure is changed to 4MPa-5MPa, preferably 4.2MPa, the temperature of the fluid is increased to about 162 ℃ due to volume compression, and is reduced to about-163 ℃ through the air cooler 16 for cooling, then the fluid is introduced into the secondary low-temperature separator 5 for cooling, the temperature of the secondary low-temperature separator 5 is reduced to 50 ℃ to 60 ℃, the temperature of the mixed material flowing out after the temperature of the secondary low-temperature separator 5 is reduced to minus 191 ℃ to minus 194 ℃, preferably about minus 192.3 ℃, the pressure is simultaneously reduced, the pressure is adjusted to about 1.8MPa through a second throttling valve 23, and then the mixed material enters a denitrification tower 6.
Further, the coolant in the secondary low-temperature separator 5 consists of the following components in parts by weight: 20-25% of methane, 30-35% of ethylene, 0-1% of ethane, 4-10% of nitrogen, 10-20% of propane and 3-15% of isopentane; the coolant in the secondary low-temperature separator 5 reduces the temperature of the material at-155 ℃ to-165 ℃ entering the secondary low-temperature separator 5 to 50 ℃ to 60 ℃, reduces the temperature of the material to be below the boiling point of methane, so that the methane is completely liquefied, and simultaneously, as the pressure of the material is 1.8MPa, the gas is basically liquefied into liquid nitrogen and only a trace amount of gas-phase nitrogen is available, so that all methane and most nitrogen can be separated from the gas phase, and the content of the helium is greatly improved; in addition, the refrigerant in the secondary low-temperature separator 5 is pressurized by the circulating compressor, expanded and refrigerated, and absorbs heat, and the component content adopted in the invention reduces the power consumption of the circulating compressor when compressing the refrigerant.
Further, the liquid phase outlet of the cryogenic separator 3 is connected to the LNG storage tank 15; the helium storage tank 10 is a high-pressure helium storage tank, a secondary compressor 13 is connected between the pressure swing adsorber 9 and the high-pressure helium storage tank, high-purity helium obtained by adsorbing miscellaneous gases by the pressure swing adsorber 9 is pressurized by the secondary compressor 13 and then enters the helium storage tank 10, and then the high-purity helium in the helium storage tank 10 can be subpackaged in helium steel bottles.
The process and the device have reasonable flow design, simple operation, safe operation and high helium extraction efficiency, and the concentration of the finally extracted high-purity helium can reach 99.999%.
It should be noted that the first-stage low-temperature heat exchanger 1 and the second-stage low-temperature separator 5 mentioned in the present invention are both low-temperature heat exchangers in the prior art, only the type of the medium therein is adjusted, and the circulating compressor and the refrigeration cycle device matched with the heat exchanger are conventionally matched; the denitrogenation tower 6, the catalytic dehydrogenation reactor 7, the pure oxygen filling device used in cooperation with the catalytic dehydrogenation reactor 7, the dehydrator 8 for dehydration and deoxidation or decarbonization and the pressure swing adsorber 9 are common devices in the field of gas separation and purification, and are not described again.
Although the present invention has been described in detail with reference to the foregoing embodiments, it will be apparent to those skilled in the art that various changes in the embodiments and/or modifications of the invention can be made, and equivalents and modifications of some features of the invention can be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention.