Foaming in glycol and amine systems results in significant capital and operating costs to the industry.

Von Phul states that solvent foaming has been described as the number one operational problem encountered in natural gas processing plants and refinery sweetening processes today, with millions of dollars lost every year in capacity reduction, lost solvent, downstream process damage and environmental discharges that can be directly attributed to solvent foaming.

The added capital investment can include a series of inlet separators, water wash columns, filter separators, coalescing filters, and sand/particle/carbon filters.

GPA initiated Research Project 006 to gather pertinent information on the nature and conditions for foaming.

This resulted in a questionnaire that was sent to the GPA membership and returned by the industry representatives.

The data represent some 100 amine and glycol treating units, located within facilities worldwide.

This project was directed at using the data, along with literature information, to provide engineers and operators with specific practices to help reduce the incidences of foaming.

GPA and GTI acknowledge the effort of the companies that responded to the survey.