Sunday, 18 June 2017

Natural gas Hydrates in brief!

     So hello everyone I have been trying to learn on natural gas hydrates and problems on hydrate formation. So below content is only for academic point of view.

Hydrate formation is the major problem in offshore exploration which leads to flow blockage, loss of circulation and even abandonment of the well. This leads to lot of loss in form of dollars and time. The practical solution for preventing or delaying hydrate formations for a long pipeline subsea network is by adding inhibitors, any chemical which reduces the water potential can be used as an inhibitor but MEOH (Methyl alcohol is a universally accepted chemical inhibitor). Knowing the conditions (Pressure and Temperature) with and without inhibitors will help pipeline designing and pipeline operation. The most common hydrate forms structures (Structure I and Structure II) hydrates will be described.
This study also shows how to dehydrate a wet gas using glycols as a solvent which are generally available in offsite gas plant facilities. Dehydration is a solution for reducing the water content before it is sending to gas transportation.And Pressure has to be maintained with an objective of gas has to be in dew point conditions.

Basic substitute equations for calculating HFT.
·               1934, Hammerschmidt.
·               Makogon correlation.
·               1991, Motiee, 15 parameter T-Explicit Equation.
·               2005, Towler and Mokhatab and
·               Bahadori and Vuthaluru. Etc
In all the cases know the process pressure condition i.e. at what pressure it is transporting and then calculate the temperature.

How to describe Type1 and Type2 Hydrates.
Actually we can easily describe Type I and Type II (or Structure I and Structure II). Based on the below graph.
Graph -->Check Figure2.2

·         Less than 3.8 A it is difficult to form hydrate.
·         If the guest molecule are Ar,Kr,N2,O2 this is Type II.
·         From 4.4 A methane, H2s, Xe, ethane, propane will fall in Type I cages.
·         From 7A no Type I and Type II will form. There is another type called TypeH.


Definition of hydrates:
I am also going through the most common gas hydrate forms. According to Von Stackberg and Muller, each of the structure contains two types of cavities.
·         Structure I consists of 46 water molecules which constitute 2 small pentagonal dodechahedra cavities and six tetrdecahedral large cavities, having 2 opposite hexagonal faces and 12 pentagonal faces.
·         Structure II consists of 136 water molecules comprising  16  small pentagonal dodechahedra cavities and 8 hexadecahedra large cavities, having 4 symmetrically arranged hexagonal faces and 12 pentagonal faces.

The average cavity radiuses of 3 cavities are
3.9 A for pentagonal dodechahedra.
4.3 A for tetrdecahedral.
4.7 A for hexadecahedra.

Basically the reason why gas hydrates will form above the ice point of water is, gases will diffuse in these cavities which will alter the condition of formation of Ice. So this is the reason hydrates will form in ~10C.

References:




·         Empirical expressions for gas hydrate stability law, its volume fraction and mass-density at temperatures 273.15 K to 290.15 KZhengquan Lu1, 2, * and Nabil Sultan1


·         PREDICTION OF GAS-HYDRATE FORMATION CONDITIONS IN PRODUCTION AND SURFACE FACILITIES A Thesis by SHARAREH AMERIPOUR

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