Sample Gas Coalescing Filter and Dryer – Sample Gas Conditioning

Gas analyzers play a critical role in many industries.  In the natural gas industry, oxygen sensors and oxygen analyzers alert the operator to the presence of this unwanted contaminant.  Elevated oxygen levels in a natural gas system can shut down a compressor station.

Yet any gas analyzer is only as good as the quality of the sample gas itself.  Contaminated sample gas leads to false alarm conditions and equipment failure.  If the sample gas is full of solid particulates, liquid droplets, and mists the analyzer will not work properly.

In the natural gas industry the most common sample gas contaminants are liquids – both water and
hydrocarbon condensate – and water vapor.  I’ve recently worked with a customer having exactly this problem.  He needed to continuously monitor high pressure, untreated field gas for oxygen.  Despite taking his sample from the outlet of a separator with a mesh pad, multiple pressure cuts in the sample line leading to the analyzer would precipitate more liquid.

Our sample gas conditioning solution was simple and effective: a small F200 series coalescing filter followed by an ID15-SW series dryer.  For just a few hundred dollars he got liquid free, low dew point sample gas.