Simulation study of hydrogen sulfide removal in underground gas storage converted from the multilayered sour gas field

Abstract A simulation study was carried out to investigate the temporal evolution of H 2 S in the Huangcaoxia underground gas storage (UGS), which is converted from a depleted sulfur-containing gas field. Based on the rock and fluid properties of the Huangcaoxia gas field, a multilayered model was built. The upper layer Jia-2 contains a high concentration of H 2 S (27.2 g/m 3 ), and the lower layer Jia-1 contains a low concentration of H 2 S (14.0 mg/m 3 ). There is also a low-permeability interlayer between Jia-1 and Jia-2. The multi-component fluid characterizations for Jia-1 and Jia-2 were implemented separately using the Peng-Robinson equation of state in order to perform the compositional simulation. The H 2 S concentration gradually increased in a single cycle and peaked at the end of the production season. The peak H 2 S concentration in each cycle showed a decreasing trend when the recovery factor (RF) of the gas field was lower than 70%. When the RF was above 70%, the peak H 2 S concentration increased first and then decreased. A higher reservoir RF, a higher maximum working pressure, and a higher working gas ratio will lead to a higher H 2 S removal efficiency. Similar to developing multi-layered petroleum fields, the operation of multilayered gas storage can also be divided into multi-layer commingled operation and independent operation for different layers. When the two layers are combined to build the storage, the sweet gas produced from Jia-1 can spontaneously mix with the sour gas produced from Jia-2 within the wellbore, which can significantly reduce the overall H 2 S concentration in the wellstream. When the working gas volume is set constant, the allocation ratio between the two layers has little effect on the H 2 S removal. After nine cycles, the produced gas’s H 2 S concentration can be lowered to 20 mg/m 3 . Our study recommends combining the Jia-2 and Jia-1 layers to build the Huangcaoxia underground gas storage. This plan can quickly reduce the H 2 S concentration of the produced gas to 20 mg/m 3 , thus meeting the gas export standards as well as the HSE (Health, Safety, and Environment) requirements in the field. This study helps the engineers understand the H 2 S removal for sulfur-containing UGS as well as provides technical guidelines for converting other multilayered sour gas fields into underground storage sites.