摘要 |
A natural gas liquid which has been cryogenically extracted from a natural gas feed is devolatilized by removing a portion of the ethane from the liquid. The natural gas feed stream is initially split into two streams, the smaller part of the stream being fed to the bottom of a demethanizing absorber at a low temperature and the larger part of the stream being fed to the top of the absorber at a substantially lower cryogenic temperature. A methane-rich gas product is recovered from the top of the absorber while the methane-lean liquid in the bottom of the absorber is fed to a non-cryogenic deethanizer. A portion of the volatiles in the methane-lean liquid are removed in the deethanizer leaving a devolatilized natural gas liquid product.
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