Design of Smokeless flare for an Associated Gas in a Production Oil field

The continuous flaring of associated gas by operators in the upstream sector of the petroleum industry has been a major source of concern to various governmental agencies and environmentalist. This work is aimed at designing a vertical high velocity gas burner to handle natural gas with maximum capacity of 6.3kg/s and high pressure drop of 1 psia across the flare. A liquid knockout drop is stalled to separate the liquid from gas and to eliminate liquid carryover into the flare. The flare is bounded by a bund wall and operated at noise level of 80dBA. The high velocity flare provides rapid air entrainment for premixing of air and gas before proceeding to the burner tip for combustion. The design calculations involve determination of the flare tip diameter, radiation effect, quantity of heat liberated, mass and volumetric flow rate, exit gas velocity, flare angle and pressure drop across the nozzles. The total capital cost of the design was estimated to be N 18,879,749.0