During petroleum industry operations, burning flammable gas components in the flaring stacks is common, normally a symbol for stable production, but flaring these components creates harmful emissions for the environment. This flaring gas has components with a high quantity of heating power, an important measurement that quantifies the energy that can potentially be obtained from this wasted resource. This paper aims to evaluate the energy usage of the flaring gas, estimating the possible energy produced with this usable resource by modeling a treatment and energy generation process employing the Aspen HYSYS® simulator. The flaring gas is characterized using different models and compositional ranges of natural gas to know what kind of gas it is and identify what type of equipment could be used for treatment and energy generation from this resource. After the gas characterization, the selection of the equipment of treatment and energy generation is necessary; this is done using a multicriteria analysis by taking into consideration the variables of gas composition, electrical efficiency, economic performance, and GHG emissions, ensuring to generate the greatest amount of energy possible to be produced with this flaring gas. By increasing the LHV, 0.95 MMSCF of flared gas of an oilfield in the VMM basin produced 5133 kW, enough energy to supply gas treatment and power generation facilities and four times the total gross consumption energy of a model oilfield in the basin, while the CO2 emissions were reduced 11.4%, and cost savings using this resource instead of diesel were obtained. In conclusion, to minimize flaring and to recover and reuse these waste components, looking for alternatives for the use of this gas-like power generation is an important option that reduces pollutants emission, gives a new source of fuel, and gives an energy usefulness to this wasted resource.
This research was funded by PROPESQ/UFPB research edit N◦001/2022 of the Federal
University of Paraiba (UFPB). The O.H.A.J. was funded by the Brazilian National Council for Scientific
and Technological Development (CNPq), grant numbers 407531/2018-1 and 303293/2020-9. The F.S.
was funded by the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq),
grant number 307588/2020-3. The research was also partially supported by the Portuguese FCT
with project reference UIDB/00690/2020 and SusTEC (LA/P/0007/2020). João Paulo Carmo was
supported by a PQ scholarship with the reference CNPq 304312/2020-7
