Novel Scavenger Technology for Effective Removal of H2S from Produced Gas in Oilfield Applications

Abstract

Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) scavengers are used to reduce the total well operation cost of working with H2S by reducing the need for gas sweeting equipment, manpower costs for H2S monitoring, fines due to out of specification production and liability due to H2S release. Commonly used H2S scavengers such as triazine and glyoxal have limitations in different applications. When overspent, triazines can form difficult to remove solid deposits. The prescence of triazines in crude oil can lead to the formation of amine hydrochloride salts that cause corrosion in refinery operations. Glyoxal based H2S scavengers are acidic and can cause corrosion especially in stagnant pipelines containing oil and water. In this paper laboratory and field results are provided on new H2S scavengers that are both non-amine and neutral pH. The applications that are examined are batch tower applications and inline injection.