The Determination of Mercury from Oil, Gas and Petrochemical Samples  

For the last 30 years, P S Analytical (PSA) has been at the forefront of trace mercury (Hg) determinations from oil, gas and petrochemical samples. It has never been more important to understand the fate of Hg in all aspects of oil and gas exploration, refining and production. The corrosive nature of Hg reacting with aluminium; the fate of Hg within a process itself; the concentration of Hg in feedstocks that could destroy expensive catalysts; as well as the OH&S concerns that Hg poses are, of course, well documented and are often a key driver in operational decisions. For these reasons much effort is spent on Hg removal technology and PSA partners with many companies to monitor and help manage this Hg removal process. This partnership begins at the research bench and carries on through to production, with PSA taking a pivotal role in ensuring successful removal technologies are deployed in the real world.

PSA have analysers to suit all aspects of the monitoring and analysis of Hg, including laboratory instruments and online analysers for gases and liquids. More recently PSA has provided solutions for speciation (fractionation) analysis and also waste-water systems associated with petrochemical processes. We are working closely with those research groups developing and supplying mercury removal technologies, by interfacing our process measurement systems in both the lab and in the field. Our systems offer multi-stream analysis so that the true efficiency of removal systems can be monitored by performing inlet and outlet measurements with one analyser.

PSA offers an independent Hg survey and consultancy service to establish and verify results across the entire process plant and to explain the significance and potential impacts that Hg may have. We have a great deal of experience performing mass balance studies for natural gas processing plants, liquid extraction processing plants and petrochemical plants. Mercury occupational exposure studies and the deployment of mercury management plans are also provided using our team of mercury experts. Our ever growing list of application notes are available here.  

Employing Atomic Fluorescence as a means of detection the PSA analysers provide ultimate detection performance. Our analysers have detection limits in the sub part-per-trillion range and over 7 orders of magnitude analytical linearity. These performance limits are not achievable with other techniques. Systems can be operated offline using laboratory based analysers or online using permanently installed field analysers.

Our equipment has been fully certified to operate in hazardous area locations.  PSA is the only company to offer online systems for liquid hydrocarbons including unstabilised samples which are otherwise difficult to sample. PSA is able to provide a complete engineering solution including, analyser shelter, probes, sample lines, sampling conditioning systems and analyser. With multiple signal processing options interfacing to the DCS is made easy.  With literally thousands of systems in the field today, and support networks in Europe, USA and SE Asia, PSA offers the ideal package of performance, reliability and support. 

P S Analytical will be attending and presenting at PEFTEC 2015 – please come and visit us at our stand number 94.