가스 하이드레이트와 파이프라인 유동 안정성

Hydrate Researches in the flow assurance

Natural gas hydrate has been a major problem for its plugging nature in the pipeline. With the demand of deep-water production, the importance of flow assurance technology, preventing hydrate, asphaltene and wax in the pipeline becomes bigger Kinetic models combined with the flow simulator are being developed to explain the nature of hydrate plug formation in the pipeline. To simulate the hydrate plug formation, each stage including the nucleation, growth and agglomeration should be considered. The hydrate nucleation is known to be stochastic and is believed hard to be predicted. Recent publications showed hydrate growth and agglomeration can be observed rigorously using a particle size analyzer. However properties of the hydrate should be investigated to model the growth and agglomeration. The attractive force between hydrate particles, supposed to be the capillary force, was revealed to be stochastic. Alternative way to model the hydrate agglomeration is to simulate by the discrete element method. Those parameters, particle size distribution, attractive force, and growth rate are embedded into the kinetic model which is combined Into the flow simulator. When compared with the flowloop experimental data, hydrate kinetic model combined into a flow simulator showed good results. With the early results, the hydrate kinetic model is promising but needs more efforts to improve it.