High nitrogenous natural gas

Up to the present, two high nitrogenous natural gas (HNNG) fields have been discovered in Poland. These are Cychry and Sulęcin fields, situated in the Polish Lowlands and characterized by nitrogen content over 90%. High nitrogenous natural gas is a good quality raw material for production of liquid nitrogen but it is more often used to adjustment of nitrogen content in natural gas pipelines of the domestic distribution network. Its utility for the latter purpose involves the gas from the fields with nitrogen content not smaller than 70%, which are not differentiated as a separate group of HNNG fields.

Cychry and Sulęcin fields occur in Zechstein dolomite. The chemical composition of gas from Sulęcin field is: 97.60% of nitrogen, 1.60% of methane, 0.40% of ethane, 0.36% of heavy hydrocarbons and 0.04% of carbon dioxide; gas from Cychry field contains: 91.00% of nitrogen, 5.20% of methane, 1.30% of ethane, 0.22% of carbon dioxide. The resources of these two fields are presented in table 1.

Table 1. List of high nitrogenous natural gas fields - million m³

At present, exploitation of HNNG is limited to the Cychry field only. In 2015, HNNG production was about 15.46 million m³.

Prepared by: Martyna Czapigo-Czapla, Dariusz Brzeziński