Development and Performance Evaluation of a Modified Separator for Enhanced Natural Gas Decontamination
Abstract
Natural gas streams extracted from production wells often contain undesirable components such as water vapor, gas condensate, and solid particulates.These impurities reduce fuel quality and damage downstream equipment through corrosion, fouling, and foaming.This study presents the development and field-scale evaluation of a high-performance gas-liquid separator designed for the deep decontamination of natural gas.The proposed separator incorporates 30 suspended baffles arranged in three rows and an anti-foaming mesh to enhance phase separation and prevent liquid re-entrainment.Field experiments were conducted at the Somontepa gas field in Uzbekistan.Compared to the baseline industrial unit, the upgraded separator reduced gas condensate from 16.58 g/m 3 to 0.725 g/m 3 , water from 4.84 g/m 3 to 0.10 g/m 3 , and solid impurities from 1.20 g/m 3 to 0.0058 g/m 3 .The foam height was lowered from 96.4 mm to 10.2 mm, and the average bubble diameter was reduced by over 60%.The design maintained low pressure drops and demonstrated stable operation under varying flow rates.Fractional analysis confirmed the quality of a recovered condensate suitable for downstream utilization.The proposed configuration offers substantial improvements in gas purification performance and economic efficiency.These results support the application of this separator design for high-contaminant natural gas streams in industrial gas processing facilities.