AMINES++
Acid Gas Treating in VMGSim and VMGThermo
Amines, Physical Solvents and Mixtures

Virtual Materials Group’s VMGSim and VMGThermo products include accurate, robust and cost effective capabilities to enable you to predict the detailed behavior of acid gas removal processes, including treating with aqueous amines, amine mixes and physical solvents.

If you are a user of VMGThermo or VMGThermo is embedded in your application, you can extend your physical property capability to include Amine treating and other gas treating processes.

VMGSim includes an extensive range of solvents and if you have an acid gas treating process, chances are VMGSim has the capability to model it. Solvents available in VMGSim and VMGThermo include:
  1. Alkanoamines - MDEA, TEA, DIPA, DEA, DGA, MEA, mixes of two solvents
  2. Physical Solvents - DMTEG, Selexol, Propylene Carbonate, NFM, MPGenosorb
  3. Physical-Chemical Solvents - Sulfolane in mixtures with DIPA and MDEA
  4. Inorganic Salts - Potassium Carbonate

Note that VMGSim Amines can model handle mixes of any Amines and mixes of any Amine with Potassium Carbonate.

Excellence in Physical Properties

Removal of acid gases such as CO2 and H2S from process streams is a requirement in many industries including gas processing, oil refining, synthesis gas purification, ammonia manufacture and gasification processes. Despite the fact that these processes are common and have been in use for many years, accurate modeling of these processes are still challenging and require advanced and specialized thermodynamics especially those processes that involve reaction and selectivity.

VMG has performed a thorough collection, model development and validation effort to bring you the best data currently available in a modern modeling system. VMG incorporates specialized thermodynamic models to enable accurate modeling of wide range of processes including those using aqueous Alkanoamines, physical solvents, mixed physical-chemical solvents and carbonate processes.
Amines Thermodynamic Model

The amines thermodynamic model is based on the concept of having the Gibbs excess free energy of the mixture in the liquid phase composed of three contributions as shown below:

 

VMGSim's amine model can handle mixed amines as well as mixtures of amines and hot potassium carbonate.
Selectivity and Reaction Rates Issues

When modeling reactive systems such as aqueous alkanolamine solutions, it is important to keep in mind that thermodynamic equilibrium does not provide the complete answer. Different diffusivities of gases and ions determine quite different overall reaction rates for H2S and CO2. Usually, H2S reactions are much faster than CO2 reactions in alkanolamine solutions. 		 

In addition to the influence of chemistry on reaction rates, there is the influence of tray or packing hydrodynamics. These effects are difficult to predict entirely based on theoretical models, and instead of using highly complex models we work with a predictive component stage efficiency model along with providing you the option to use mass transfer multipliers to improve matching to equipment performance data using the minimum amount of adjustable parameters.

Integrated Claus and Tailgas Treating

Along with the amine treating property packages VMGSim also includes a comprehensive set of unit operation models and accurate properties to model Claus and tailgas treating units. With VMGSim you can evaluate Claus and tailgas treating units in a single simulation model.