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 H2S 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 H2S (27.2 g/m3), and the lower layer Jia-1 contains a low concentration of H2S (14.0 mg/m3). 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 H2S concentration gradually increased in a single cycle and peaked at the end of the production season. The peak H2S 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 H2S 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 H2S 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 H2S concentration in the wellstream. When the working gas volume is set constant, the allocation ratio between the two layers has little effect on the H2S removal. After nine cycles, the produced gas’s H2S concentration can be lowered to 20 mg/m3. Our study recommends combining the Jia-2 and Jia-1 layers to build the Huangcaoxia underground gas storage. This plan can quickly reduce the H2S concentration of the produced gas to 20 mg/m3, 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 H2S removal for sulfur-containing UGS as well as provides technical guidelines for converting other multilayered sour gas fields into underground storage sites.