摘要 |
The invention discloses a method for removing hydrogen sulphide (HS) from a natural gas stream (13) comprising methane (CH) and HS, which comprises the steps of cooling the natural gas stream in a heat exchanger assembly (14, 16,18); feeding at least part of the cooled natural gas stream through a feed conduit (19, 21) into a cyclonic expansion and separation device (1) in which the cooled natural gas stream is expanded in a nozzle (4) and thereby further cooled to a temperature and pressure below the dew point of HS and is separated by inducing the cooled natural gas stream to swirl in a tubular separation chamber (9) thereby inducing centrifugal forces to separate the cooled natural gas stream into a cooled low density fluid fraction, which is HS depleted and methane enriched, and a cooled high density fluid fraction, which is HS enriched and methane depleted; feeding the cooled low density fluid fraction to a product gas conduit (33) which is connected to the heat exchanger assembly (14) for cooling the natural gas stream fed to the cyclonic expansion and separation device (1); and feeding the cooled high density fluid fraction to a fractionating column (8) for further separation. |