Estimation of Hydrate Inhibitor Loss in Hydrocarbon Liquid Phase

Abstract

The amount of hydrate inhibitor to be injected in the gas processing and transmission system to avoid hydrate formation not only must be sufficient to prevent freezing of the inhibitor in the water phase but also must be sufficient to provide for the equilibrium vapor phase content of the inhibitor and the loss of the inhibitor in any liquid hydrocarbon. In this article, a new numerical algorithm is developed for estimation of loss of methanol in paraffinic hydrocarbons at various temperatures and methanol concentrations in the water phase The predicted values showed good agreement with the reported data. The solubility of methanol in paraffin hydrocarbons is calculated for temperatures in the range of 240° to 320°K and methanol concentrations up to 70% in the water phase, where the average absolute deviation is around 4%.

Keywords:

• correlation
• gas hydrate
• hydrate inhibitor
• methanol
• natural gas
• numerical algorithm

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author acknowledges both the Australian Department of Education, Science and Training for the Endeavour International Postgraduate Research Scholarship, and the Office of Research & Development at Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Western Australia, for providing a Postgraduate Research Scholarship to pursue higher studies at Curtin University. The author also acknowledges the State of Western Australia for providing Top Up scholarship through the Western Australia: Energy Research Alliance (WA: ERA).