ABSTRACT
Gas treating (also referred to as gas cleaning, gas processing, and gas refining) consists of separating all of the various gaseous hydrocarbon derivatives and fluids from raw or untreated natural gas. Major transportation pipelines usually impose restrictions on the makeup of the natural gas that is allowed into the pipeline, which requires that before the gas can be transported it must be purified. Although ethane, propane, butane, and pentane hydrocarbon derivatives must be removed from natural gas streams, this does not mean that they are all waste products; on the contrary, these hydrocarbon derivatives are valuable feedstocks for the production of petrochemicals and solvents.
The focus of this chapter is gas cleaning (the removal of contaminants) from gas streams by the use of solvents, including the use of water as a solvent and as a carrier vehicle to convey reactants to the reaction site.
