Induction time, storage capacity, and rate of methane hydrate formation in the presence of SDS and silver nanoparticles

ABSTRACT

In this communication, the kinetic parameters of methane hydrate formation (induction time, quantity and rate of gas uptake, storage capacity (SC), and apparent rate constant) in the presence of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), synthetized silver nanoparticles (SNPs), and mixture of SDS + SNPs have been studied. Experimental measurements were performed at temperature of 273.65 K and initial pressure of 7 MPa in a 460 cm³ stirred batch reactor. Our results show that adding SDS, SNPs and their mixture increases the quantity of gas uptake, water to hydrate conversion, and SC of methane hydrate formation, noticeably. Using 300 ppm SDS increases the SC and the quantity of methane uptake 615, and 770%, respectively, compared with pure water. Investigating the hydrate growth rate at the start of hydrate formation process shows that, using SNPs, SDS, and their mixture increases the initial apparent rate constant of hydrate rate, considerably. Our results show that the system of methane + water + SDS 500 ppm + SNPs 45 µM represents the maximum value of initial apparent rate constant, compared with other tested systems.

KEYWORDS:

• Clathrate hydrate
• gas hydrate
• growth rate
• kinetics
• SDS
• silver nanoparticles