Development of a Tool to Assess Hydrate-Plug-Formation Risk in Oil-Dominant Pipelines

This work presents a new simple algorithm for the rapid screening of hydrate plug formation risk, using experimental models of gas hydrate plug formation in oil-dominant systems. The algorithm is based on hydrate formation from an emulsified water phase, where resultant hydrate particles may interact to form large aggregates that increase slurry viscosity and pressure drop. Predictions of pressure drop were compared with a hydrate-forming industrial flow loop, resulting in average absolute deviations between model and experiment of less than 5 psi for liquid-phase Reynolds numbers of less than 75,000 and water content below 70 vol% of all liquid.