Water and hydrocarbon dew point control units (Silica gel)

Water and hydrocarbon dew point control units based on Silica Gel adsorbent technology have the great advantage of providing both water and hydrocarbon dew point with only one adsorbent bed. Silica Gel pore diameter is higher compared to the one of molecular sieves: its particular characteristics allow to adsorb not only water, but also heavy hydrocarbons.

The principle of operation is based on Temperature Swing Adsorption, i.e adsorption of water/hydrocarbons occurs at ambient temperature; when the bed gets saturated with water or heavy hydrocarbons, it has to be regenerated with wet gas at high temperature.

Unless very low pressure drops are imposed by the process, the performance is achieved without rotating machines and consequently with low maintenance costs: this is possible because regeneration can be accomplished with wet regeneration gas, that is recycled to the main process stream by means of a pressure control valve.

All these features make this technology very reliable when continuous injection of gas according to specifications into the pipeline is required. In many cases, Silica Gel plants represent the best compromise in terms of CAPEX, OPEX and reliability.