In the liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry, CO2 needs
to be removed to 50 ppm to avoid CO2 freeze-out under cryogenic
conditions. However, in LNG produced from unconventional natural gas
that is rich in ethane, the allowance of CO2 may be much
higher due to the much higher CO2 solubility than that
in conventional LNG. Considering that CO2 solubility data
in liquid CH4 + C2H6 mixtures are
still quite lacking, a static solid–liquid equilibrium experimental
setup is built to measure the CO2 solubility data. The
experiments are carried out at the temperature range of 148–203
K, covering an ethane content of 0–100%. The experimental results
are compared with theoretical calculated results based on equations
of state and Gibbs–Helmholtz relation. CO2 solubility
in the CH4 + C2H6 mixture increases
exponentially with increasing temperature. The addition of ethane
significantly increases the CO2 solubility in the entire
temperature zone, indicating that the purification specification of
CO2 in natural gas with high ethane content can be significantly
enlarged, and it is easier to achieve carbon removal by cryogenic
distillation. Furthermore, the increase in CO2 solubility
in the CH4 + C2H6 mixture approximates
a logarithmic relationship to the C2H6 content.