Because of the multicomponent nature of the produced fluid, the higher the pressure at which the initial separation occurs, the more liquid will be obtained in the separator. This liquid contains some light components that vaporize in the stock tank downstream of the separator. If the pressure for initial separation is too high, too many light components will stay in the liquid phase at the separator and be lost to the gas phase at the tank. If the pressure is too low, not as many of these light components will be stabilized into the liquid at the separator and they will be lost to the gas phase. This phenomenon, which can be calculated using flash equilibrium techniques discussed in “Fluid Properties“, is shown in Figure 2-5. It is important to understand this phenomenon qualitatively. The tendency of any one component in the process stream to flash to the vapor phase depends on its partial pressure. The partial pressure of a component in a vessel is defined as the number of molecules of that component in the vapor space divided by the total number of molecules of all components in the vapor space times the pressure in the vessel. Thus, if the pressure in the vessel is high, the partial pressure for the component will be relatively high and the molecules of that component will tend toward the liquid phase. This is seen by the top line in Figure 2-5. As the separator pressure is increased, the liquid flow rate out of the separator increases.
The problem with this is that many of these molecules are the lighter hydrocarbons (methane, ethane, and propane), which have a strong tendency to flash to the gas state at stock tank conditions (atmospheric pressure). In the stock tank, the presence of these large numbers of molecules creates a low partial pressure for the intermediate range hydrocarbons (butanes, pentane, and heptane) whose flashing tendency at stock tank conditions is very susceptible to small changes in partial pressure. Thus, by keeping the lighter molecules in the feed to the stock tank we manage to capture a small amount of them as liquids, but we lose to the gas phase many more of the intermediate range molecules. That is why beyond some optimum point there is actually a decrease in stock tank liquids by increasing the separator operating pressure.
