著者

山田 淳也 川崎 緑 大塚 町恵 金田 英伯

出版者

石油技術協会

雑誌

石油技術協会誌 (ISSN:03709868)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.81, no.5, pp.401-407, 2016 (Released:2018-05-09)

参考文献数

28

---

Natural gas and oil produced from in-situ reservoir may contain a small amount of mercury. The origin of mercury in these production fluids is thought to be atmospheric mercury deposition or enhanced mercury concentrations resulting from interaction of hydrocarbon fluids with mercury rich sediment, such as coal and carbonaceous shale. Mercury in natural gas can cause amalgam corrosion of aluminum heat exchangers in Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) plants, and mercury in condensate and crude oil can cause catalyst poisoning in oil refineries and petrochemical plants. It is important to remove mercury from natural gas and oil in various aspects of stable oil/gas production, environmental issues and occupational health and safety in production facilities. There are several mercury removal technologies for natural gas, oil and produced water. Metal sulfide adsorbents and activated carbons are popular technique to remove mercury from natural gas and oil. However, there are some difficulties in mercury removal from oil. These mercury adsorbents can work for removing only elemental mercury in condensate, while cannot work for the other types of mercury species, such as ionic mercury and organic mercury. In addition, wax interferes mercury removal in condensate and crude oil by covering adsorbed sites of adsorbents. For efficient mercury removal, it is important to know what amount of mercury content and what types of mercury species are in production fluids. To achieve detailed understanding of these key points, an analytical method using Gas Chromatograph-Inductive Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometer (GC-ICP-MS) is optimized for mercury speciation analysis. The optimization focuses on condensate samples in particular. This analytical technique will contribute efficient mercury removal from production fluids.