Construction and application of energy management and control system in natural gas purification plants

Objective To address the issues of high energy consumption, low energy utilization efficiency, and poor economic benefits associated with natural gas purification plants, an energy management and control system is established with the support of information technology and internet of things technology.

Method Based on the analysis of the production scale, technological characteristics, and energy consumption of natural gas purification plants, the overall architecture, network deployment architecture, and functional architecture of the energy management and control system were designed. In addition, a comparative analysis was conducted on the energy-saving effects and economic benefits of natural gas purification plants before and after the application of system.

Result Firstly, the energy management and control system can accurately reflect the energy consumption characteristics of natural gas purification plants, meeting the needs of energy management and control work. Secondly, the energy management and control system in analysis level for natural gas purification plants includes several major functional modules, such as energy consumption cockpit, online monitoring, energy consumption inquiry, comparative analysis, early warning and alarms, energy efficiency benchmarking. It realizes the effective measurement of energy consumption, real-time monitoring of energy consumption status, alarming of energy performance parameters exceeding thresholds, effective analysis of energy efficiency levels, and reasonable resolution of main energy consumption issues in natural gas purification plants. Thirdly, after the energy management and control system is put into operation, the comprehensive energy consumption per unit of natural gas purification production has decreased from 138.20 kgce/10⁴ m³ to 127.47 kgce/10⁴ m³ （1 kgce=29.3076 MJ） with the annual comprehensive economic benefit up to 16.30 million yuan.

Conclusion The construction and application of energy management and control system greatly improves scientific and refined levels of energy management in natural gas purification plants, and powerfully promotes green and low-carbon development of gas field enterprises with energy consumption reducing, cost cutting, emission controlling, quality improving, and efficiency increasing.