Recycling of spent moleclular sieves from oil and gas industry: North gas company as a case study

Abstract

Molecular sieves are used over a wide range of applications in industries especially in petroleum and gas processing plants. There is a huge amount, tenths of tons to be disposed annually by oil and gas companies, sometimes in a non-safe way. These materials when they are disposed under non regulations, it will have harmful impact on the environment. In Iraq, these materials are disposed unsafely and there are no procedures and regulations that are imposed for safe handling and managing of them. This being the case, in this study the spent molecular sieves from North Gas Company (NGC) used to replace the ordinary Portland cement(OPC) in the process of concrete production. Based on the compressive strength test results of the concrete the spent molecular sieves can be used to replace the OPC by up to 15% of spent molecular sieves. The concrete specimens are well complies with the Iraqi Standard IQS 5:1984. Moreover, this method can be more cost-efficient than conventional disposal and land filling process for this type of solid wastes.