In this research, the removal of heat stable salts was considered as one of the most effective factors in the process of amine degradation. To remove this type of salts, ion exchange method was used. A resin purification system was investigated to separate the heat stable salt ions of acetate, formaldehyde, chloride, oxalate, thiosulphate, sulphate and sulphite from alkanolamine solution flowing in the Ilam gas refinery sweetening units. In order to remove the existing ions in the lean amine solution, a strong anionic resin designated as INDION GS 300 was tested. Ion-exchange systems operated in batch and continuous mode (fixed-bed column) were applied to remove these salts. The effects of different operating variables such as contact time, temperature and amount of resin were examined. The optimum values of amount of resin and temperature found for both systems were 5 g and 25°C, respectively. Furthermore, the optimum times for batch and continuous systems were 30 and 10 min, respectively. Results of experiments revealed that around 95.5 and 97 % of salts were removed using batch and column operations, respectively. Moreover, the amine solution pH increased from 10 to 11, indicating a corrosion rate reduction in the amine system of the Ilam gas refinery.
