Prediction of induction time for natural gas components during gas hydrate formation in the presence of kinetic hydrate inhibitors in a flow mini-loop apparatus

The objective of this work is the prediction of induction time (ti) for simple gas hydrate formation in the presence or absence of kinetic hydrate inhibitors at various conditions based on the Kashchiev and Firoozabadi model in a flow mini-loop apparatus. For this purpose, the ti model is developed for simple gas hydrate formation in batch system for natural gas components during hydrate formation in a flow mini-loop apparatus. A laboratory flow mini-loop apparatus is designed and built up to measure the ti for simple gas hydrate formation when a hydrate former (such as C1, C3, CO2 and i-C4) is contacted with water in the absence or presence of dissolved inhibitor, such as poly vinylpyrrolidone, PVCap and L-tyrosine. In each experiment, a water blend saturated with pure gas is circulated up to a required pressure. Pressure is maintained at a constant value during experimental runs by means of the required gas make-up. The average absolute deviation (AAD) of the predicted ti values from the corresponding experimental data are found to be about 11% and 9.4% for gas hydrate formation ti in the presence or absence of kinetic hydrate inhibitors, respectively. (c) 2012 Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering