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Producing water in the desert
The chemical reaction that occurs when synthesis gas is passed over catalysts in a gas to liquids (GTL) plant produces water as well as the building blocks for GTL products.
When it starts up, the Pearl GTL plant will not only produce 140,000 barrels of gas to liquids products a day, it will also produce at least as much water — a resource hard to come by in Qatar’s desert climate.
The facility is designed to use every drop of it as part of our approach to not release any liquids from the plant. When operational, Pearl GTL’s industrial water processing plant will be the world’s largest to recover, treat and re-use all industrial process water. With a capacity to treat 280,000 barrels of water a day, Pearl GTL’s water treatment plant is comparable to a plant for a city of 140,000 people.
“There are various treatment facilities available for the treatment of municipal water, but application at this large scale in the oil and gas industry is unique,” says Henry van Straten, Shell water technology team leader.
The amount that Pearl GTL will produce makes it possible to run the plant without drawing on Qatar’s scarce natural water resources. After cleaning the industrial water by removing trace metals, hydrocarbons and any particles, it is re-used in the plant. Most water will be used for cooling by evaporation and for steam systems. Some of it will be used for landscaping at the plant.
From this water Pearl GTL will produce 8,000 tonnes of steam per hour that will be used to run the eight steam-driven air compressors on the plant’s air separation units as well as other steam-driven equipment like electrical power generators. Water will also be circulated through equipment cooling units.
