Abstract
Determination of Iron Content in Triethylene glycol (TEG) samples is a very important indicator in measuring the system corrosion rate in oil and gas facilities. This study employed the application of an alternative/easy and reliable test method, which involved the use of a spectrophotometer for quantification of Iron concentration in tri ethylene glycol samples, that are used in sour gas dehydration units, rather than the sophisticated technique of Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectroscopy, ICP-OES. The main challenge was how to eliminate/minimize the significant interference from the carryover condensate hydrocarbons, BTEX, H2S and amine additives, which cause either precipitation with spectrophotometer reagents or turbid samples. The sample pretreatment process included: 1 - Sample digestion with dilution to eliminate the dissolved acid gases and the dissolved BTEX from the sample in acidic medium; 2 - pH adjustment from 9 – 10.5 to eliminate the amine additives interference with spectrophotometer reagents and 3 – Application of standard addition technique with certified reference material for iron with dilution, to reach the spectrophotometer detection limit and give intense color with more UV absorbance. The method was validated against ICP-OES and the results variance were within 10% acceptance criteria.