Recently, the natural gas decarbonization technology of polytetrafluoroethylene hollow fiber membrane contactors developed by researchers Kang Guodong and Cao Yiming from the New Membrane Technology Research Group (DNL0905 Group) of the Energy Conservation and Environment Research Department of our institute was applied in the Terengganu Gas Terminal, TGAST) completed the industrial test, all indicators met the contract requirements, and passed the acceptance of the application unit.

Natural gas production is usually accompanied by a certain amount of acid gas. Decarbonization is a necessary link before the use and further processing of natural gas. The traditional absorber technology has the problems of large volume and small operating flexibility, which limits its application in space constrained occasions such as offshore platforms. Membrane contactor is a coupling technology of membrane and traditional absorption process. Integrating their respective advantages, it has the advantages of small equipment size, high separation efficiency, low operating energy consumption, and is very suitable for the development and purification of natural gas in the marine environment.

Kang Guodong and Cao Yiming's team have carried out in-depth research on the development of PTFE hollow fiber membrane and the development of membrane contactor application technology in recent years, and have carried out long-term international cooperation with PETRONAS in the field of natural gas decarbonization. They have successively completed laboratory concept verification, pilot scale test and pilot scale test demonstration. This work is a new progress in cooperation between the two sides. The natural gas treatment capacity of the membrane contactor natural gas decarbonization industrial test device is 1000 Nm3/h, and the operating pressure is 5.2 MPa. After systematically investigating the feed gas composition, pretreatment process, absorbent loading, single core and multi-core component structure and other process conditions, the continuous operation test for more than 2000 hours was conducted from December 2023 to March 2024. The user acceptance results show that the performance of the membrane contactor is stable, and the CO2 content in the product natural gas is better than the contract indicators.

At present, PETRONAS has signed a commercialization agreement with our institute, committed to the commercial promotion and industrial application of membrane contactor natural gas decarbonization technology, and initiated new cooperation in the field of flue gas carbon capture.