Williams gift fits Lackawanna’s needs

It may be really big, but this gift is a perfect fit just the same: A “glycol dehydrator,” it stands 35 ft tall and about as wide, is used to process natural gas before compression and distribution and now is nestled snugly into one corner of the Susquehanna County site of Lackawanna College’s School of Petroleum & Natural Gas.

The dehydrator is the gift of Williams, one of North America’s largest natural gas gatherers and processors, and it just arrived at the school, which offers Associate of Science degrees in petroleum and natural gas technologies.

Williams operates compressor and gas processing stations, gathering pipelines and other facilities within miles of the School of PNG, which is in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale region, and saw the gift as a way of achieving two important goals: making it clear that Williams wants to continue being a good neighbour and helping to build a competent, reliable work force to meet its technical employment needs.

Stalker, a native of northeastern Pennsylvania, says dehydrators like this are found at 95% of the natural-gas compressor installations in the region, and industry sources say tens of thousands of these units are in daily use across the nation.

A glycol dehydrator, he said, has two key components: a “contact tower” (a steel cylinder that can stand 35 ft tall) and a “glycol reboiler” (a large horizontal cylinder), which is basically a kind of still. The system uses a chemical called “triethylene glycol” (TEG) as a dehydrating agent.

The wet gas collected from wells enters the base of the contact tower where it ascends upward, contacting the TEG, which absorbs water. The gas, now dry, then enters the pipeline. The TEG is pumped to the reboiler, where it is heated sufficiently to boil off the water it has absorbed. The TEG is then pumped back to the tower to be reused in an endless cycle.

The unit at the college will be non-operational, Stalker said, but all the piping and other hardware needed to operate such a unit will be installed so students can see how an actual dehydrator works and become thoroughly familiar with it.

In addition to the unit itself, Williams has given the college US$ 10 000 to cover the costs of acquiring and installing the necessary controllers, regulators, valves and piping. The firm has not placed a cash value on the unit, which is used but perfectly usable after the hardware additions, but Stalker said a new one would cost between US$ 80 000 and US$ 100 000.

Rick Marquardt, Executive Director of the School of Petroleum & Natural Gas, said he is both pleased and appreciative of the gifts Williams has made to the school. The firm has also given US$ 2500 to fund a scholarship for a School of PNG student.

Adapted from press release by Hannah Priestley-Eaton

Read the article online at: https://www.worldpipelines.com/business-news/31032014/williams_gift_fits_lackawannas_needs/