Natural gas extracted from underground is saturated with water vapor. Dehydration is required to avoid the deposition of gas hydrates and ice that may obstruct the gas flow in pipelines. Current dehydration technology uses glycol absorption, which releases benzene. The PAI technology is based on gas transport by eddy diffusion. It is environmentally benign.

A large temperature gradient is maintained between the gas stream and the chilled wall. Turbulent gas flow brings the moisture to the chilled wall rapidly and freezes the moisture on the cold surfaces with very high efficiency. A compact dehydration unit has been designed and successfully demonstrated in PAI's laboratory. A prototype was built for field test at a gas well head in New Mexico in 1996.