BCL304/e qualified as ecomagination product

The environmental challenge

Sour gas, found in oil fields, poses several environmental problems. When companies extract oil and gas from their wells, they also release harmful greenhouse gases, including CO2, SO2 and H2S, into the environment. Each 1,000 cubic meters of natural gas that is extracted results in the emission of 351 kilograms of greenhouse gases measured as carbon dioxide equivalents.
GE's innovative solution: Green House Gas sequestration

GE's BCL304e Series Centrifugal Compressor not only decreases the amount of GHGs that are released but also increases the amount of oil or gas that can be extracted. The compressor prevents the release of GHGs into the atmosphere by re-injecting these gases into the ground. The pressure created due to the re-injection leads to an increase in the exploitation of reservoirs by up to 10 - 20 percent. GE's high pressure re-injection BCL fleet (considering just the compression trains installed since 2000 up to now) has the capacity to re-inject an amount of associated gas that, if flared and vented would release up to 49 million metric tons of carbon dioxide every year into the atmosphere. This volume is approximately equivalent to the annual CO2 emissions of the country of Spain, 8.6 million average U.S. passenger cars or 18.6 million average European passenger cars.

The Centrifugal Compressor in action

International oil and gas companies traffic heavily in the Caspian Sea, which, while rich in oil and gas resources, contains a high concentration of contaminants that must be properly extracted from the oil.

GE's BCL304e Series Centrifugal Compressor is the only compressor which re-injects sour gas at the pressures required by Caspian Sea fields (beyond 800 bar), allowing the oil companies to take their product to market.

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