Absorber Tower Difficulties

O&G

I’m working with a pretty standard stripper/absorber setup in a sat gas plant. After debottlenecking the stripper, the absorber has started to see a multitude of flooding events. I’m curious what you all have found is a common cause for absorber upsets in industry. Have stabilized and unstabilized naphtha as lean oil but LPG recovery is pretty bad due to recent tower performance. Wouldn’t think it’s water as there as coalescers on the stripper feed and rich oil streams, but the tower takes random refinery net gas so that could be a concern. Would equilibrium water be sufficient to form a third phase in the tower?

Posted Jul 11, 2026, 1:21 PM UTC

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