EWAnalysis: Impact of technology on gas processing plants

The gas processing industry has modernized and embraced technology throughout boom and bust cycles. As with refining and petrochemicals, gas processing has migrated from analog control to digital control, and from paper-chart recorders to process historians. Improvements in the ability to view information across a plant have enabled operations staff to achieve better insights into upsets, efficiency and troubleshooting. However, gas processing operations differ in that there is no site storage, except for natural gas liquids (NGL) and condensate. Short-term gas storage options include packing transmission pipeline or recoverable injection underground. The compounds in NGL are increasingly so