GPA Europe August 2025 Newsletter
All the latest news from GPA Europe...
Promoting Technical and Operational Excellence Throughout the
European Gas Industry
2025/6 Schedule of Events
** Save the Dates! **
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Date & Time |
What |
Where |
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25th September, 11.30am-12.30pm UK time |
Free Technical Webinar Theme: Gas to X |
On-line |
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20th November 2025 |
GPAE Technical Meeting & AGM Theme: general gas processing |
London, UK |
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3rd - 5th June 2026 |
GPAE Annual Conference Theme: decarbonisation ** includes a visit to The Northern Lights Project ** |
Bergen, Norway |
| April 2026 - date to be confirmed | Free Technical Webinar | On-line |
Be part of our conferences promoting a new energy future and the transition of our industry towards that future: we are looking for stories about the development of technology and best practices affecting Natural Gas processing. As well as a look at Hydrogen, Biogas, Ammonia, Carbon Capture and Storage, and LNG amongst others, to inspire the gas processing community. Email your abstracts to: [email protected].
Awards: each year we present an award at our AGM for the best paper. The Best Paper Award is selected by our conference attendees and is based on the feedback scores received.
The Aungier Award is also granted for the best paper presented by one of our Young Professionals at our conferences. The winner is decided by our Technical Committee. Alongside the award, the winner will also receive £1,500.
April Webinar
The latest Technical Webinar took place on 17th April, with a presentation from Jade Gray and Martin Curtis of Bechtel on “Why You Need a Carbon Capture Pilot Plan for your Flue Gas”
To view and/or download the Webinar, click here.
Call for Papers!
Be part of our conferences promoting a new energy future and the transition of our industry towards that future. We are looking for stories for the following events:
Technical Webinar, 25th September 2025
Webinar Theme: Gas to X
All our slots are filled for the September 2025 webinar, but there is still opportunity to present your paper at the following events:
Technical Meeting and AGM, 20th November 2025, London, UK
Technical Meeting Theme: Gas Processing topics such as Natural Gas processing, Hydrogen, Biogas, Ammonia, Carbon Capture and Storage, and LNG, etc.
2026 Conference 3rd to 5th June in Bergen, Norway
Conference Theme: decarbonisation
Please submit your abstract title, author, and 100-200 words to [email protected]
We would love to hear from you… come and share your story with us!
The Bi-Annual In Brief Publication
** The Spring/Summer 2025 In Brief is available for download! **
If you have any ideas for a lead article, have something to share with the community, or would like to sponsor an In Brief publication, let us know at [email protected]
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Our Spring/Summer 2025 issue of In Brief is available - click here to check it out! The lead article, contributed by Tom Brawley of Shell, is titled "Reducing Emissions Through Risk-Based Hydrate Management". Please contact the GPAE Team if you would like to contribute towards our next issue. Opportunities include: contributing towards the lead article, advertising, or giving an update to our members - email [email protected] |
Paper/Presentation of the Month – July 2025
In this month's Newsletter, we are pleased to announce that the most popular downloaded paper/presentation of July 2025 was ...
LNG Pre-treatment - Heavy Hydrocarbon Removal from Lean Natural Gas
Speaker: Dr. Tobias Eckardt - BASF
Aromatic compounds, such as benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene (BTEX), have relatively high frost points in methane, leading to early freezing in the cold section of an LNG plant. Traditionally, these hydrocarbons have been removed in a Scrub Column or in a NGL Recovery unit with a turbo-expander process. Increasingly, LNG plants, especially in North America, are fed by natural gas from the pipeline grid. NGL’s have been extracted from this gas, resulting in a lean gas with a tail of heavy hydrocarbons in trace concentrations.
Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is produced by cooling natural gas to negative 160°C. Prior to cooling to these low temperatures, impurities must be removed from the gas to ensure proper performance of the downstream liquefaction process. A standard pre-treatment line-up consists of an acid gas removal unit (AGRU), a molecular sieve dehydration unit to remove water to <0.1ppm, and a mercury removal unit. It wasn’t until the first baseload LNG plants in the United States processing lean gas started up in the mid-2010s and began to experience freezing in the cryogenic heat exchangers that this typical pre-treatment approach was questioned. Meanwhile, the industry has acknowledged and started to address the freezing problem, which reduces LNG throughput throughout the region.
The freezing of coldboxes in US LNG plants is due to traces of heavy hydrocarbons (HHCs) in otherwise lean natural gas, which are not removed prior to the cold section of the plant. Depending on the design of the plant, HHC freezing can occur as far upstream as the gas/gas heat exchanger upstream of the turboexpander. However, it is more common for the freezing to occur in the cryogenic heat exchanger of the plant. US LNG plants have addressed the HHC freezing problem by reducing throughput or completely shutting down the trains to warm up the coldbox to derime. This process leads to flaring of natural gas and excess energy consumption due to warming and cooling of the coldbox.
It has been shown that for an existing plant and for new LNG development projects adsorptive removal of heavy hydrocarbons and water in a TSA system is a viable option to prevent HHC freezing. Especially as a drop-in solution, implementing adsorptive HHC removal in the pre-treatment section is a powerful approach to debottleneck LNG plant without or with minimal CAPEX spending.
The interactive workshop will address technology fundamentals as well as limitations and advantages of different approaches to address HHC freezeout. Operational data from existing plants will be discussed.
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