Prediction of sulfur content in propane and butane after gas purification on a treatment unit

The acidic compounds such as Mercaptans, H 2 S and COS are commonly present in the liquid LPG streams in the south Pars gas processing plant. Sulfur contaminants not only lead to odor problems but can form objectionable oxides on combustion and cause environmental pollution. In present study, Support Vector Machine (SVM) is employed to develop an intelligent model to predict the sulfur content of propane and butane products of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) treatment unit of south Pars gas processing plant of Assaluyeh/Iran. A set of seven input/output plant data each consisting of 365 data has been used to train, optimize, and test the model. Model development that consists of training, optimization and test was performed using randomly selected 70%, 15%, and 15% of available data respectively. Test results from the SVM developed model showed good compliance with operating plant data. Squared correlation coefficients for developed models are 0.97 and 0.99 for propane and butane sulfur content, respectively. According to the results of the present case study, SVM could be regarded as a reliable accurate approach for modeling the sulfur content of LPG treatment unit of a natural gas processing plant.