Mercury doesn’t always behave as expected.
In a challenging unconventional gas development, a paraffin-rich crude was found to contain mercury concentrations up to ten times above the 100 µg/kg sales specification. Despite the high concentrations, more than 90% of the mercury was elemental and purgeable — physically trapped within the wax rather than chemically bound.
Conventional mercury removal technologies proved ineffective or unsuitable.
Qa3 developed a different approach: gas purging.
Mercury is found in almost all oil and gas reservoirs, principally in the elemental form at varying concentrations. Mercury present in produced hydrocarbon fluids deposits onto the internal process infrastructure via a number of mechanisms, including chemisorption and adsorption. The primary mechanism of deposition observed by Qa3 is through reaction with iron sulphide to form mercury sulphide, demonstrated by the case study below.
During our numerous projects worldwide assisting our clients in understanding the issues that can arise from the presence of mercury in oil and gas, we have observed many examples of unconsidered emissions of mercury, where without comprehensive sampling and analysis it would go unnoticed by the operators.
When conventional mercury removal doesn’t work, think differently.
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