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Developing A Model for Evaluation of Energy Recovery From Flared Gas

Vahabpour, Amir | 2016

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  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 48743 (46)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Energy Engineering
  6. Advisor(s): Saboohi, Yadollah; Sattari, Sourena
  7. Abstract:
  8. According to the World Bank, nearly 154 billion cubic meters of gas is flared in the world every year. Iran is known as the third gas flaring country by burning about 11.4 bcm (approximately 8% of the total amount). Flared gas is a rich gas and has a high heating value. Therefore flaring it equals to waste of a valuable source of energy. In addition, serious concerns about its environmental effects due to emission of considerable amounts of CO2, SOx, NOx and other pollutants, makes it necessary to find a solution to reduce gas flaring. There are several ways for flared gas utilization including electricity generation, injecting into oil wells for enhanced oil recovery, gas processing and sending to national pipeline, using as feed for petrochemical plants, etc. Each of these methods has specific technical and economical features to be considered. There are also complications on estimation of externalities of gas flaring practice and the share of royalty in its price. Lack of a vindicable basis for pricing flared gas results to suspension of recovery projects and continuation of waste of the resources. The major goal of this project is to develop an extensive mathematical programming model as an analytical tool for optimal decision making. A professional software called Energy Systems Modelling (ESM) is deployed as the modelling tool. The optimal results of the model represents the amount of utilized flared gas in market equilibrium and shows the optimum resource allocation. Another output of this model could be a relatively accurate estimate for marginal cost of associated gas production in Iranian oil fields. All of these outputs are analysed in 3 different scenarios of external environmental costs. The results show that in case the flared gas is sold to its consumers by the maximum possible price, some 84% of total amount of associated gas in Iran's oil fields would be economically recovered. This would prevent 9 bcm of gas from flaring which is worth at least $1.6 billion
  9. Keywords:
  10. Associated Gas ; Flare Gases ; Flare Gases Recovery ; Resources Allocation ; Optimum Allocation ; Linear Mathematical Programming

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