Thermodynamics of gas hydrate equilibria

• Main Author: Avlonitis, Dimitrios Anastassios
• Published: Heriot-Watt University 1992
• Subjects: 660; Chemical engineering
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.305136

Reservoir fluids are usually saturated with water at reservoir conditions and may form gas hydrates in transfer lines, which potentially may plug the system. For long subsea pipelines, methanol injection is the practical means for preventing hydrate formation and for decomposing blockages. For efficient and economical pipeline design and operation, phase boundaries, phase fractions and distribution of water and methanol among the equilibrium phases of the system must be accurately known. The system comprising reservoir fluids, water and methanol demonstrates a complex multiphase behaviour and currently no quantitatively adequate description for it has been detailed in the open literature. The problem is addressed in this thesis by a consistent application of classical equilibrium thermodynamics. At ordinary operating conditions any combination of as many as six phases can be potentially present. For the description of the vapour and all liquid phases, we use one cubic equation of state with nonconventional mixing rules developed as part of this work. Classical thermodynamics together with the cell theory of van der Waals and Platteeuw were employed for the development of a general model for the calculation of heat capacities of gas hydrates. A consistent methodology has also been developed for obtaining the potential parameters of the cell model. Thereafter, application of the model demonstrates that for nearly spherical guest molecules the classical cell theory is a strictly valid description of gas hydrates. However, complex guest molecules distort the hydrate lattice, resulting in variation of the numerical values of certain parameters of the model. This work presents an efficient algorithm for the solution of the problem of the identity of the equilibrium phases in multiphase systems where gas hydrates are potentially present. The algorithm is based on the alternative use of two equivalent forms of the Gibbs tangent plane criterion and it is believed to be more appropriate for systems involving gas hydrate equilibria than previous methods. Application of the proposed algorithm in several regions of the phase diagram of both binary and multicomponent systems shows that it can be used reliably to solve any phase equilibria problem, including the location of phase boundaries. In summary this work presents a consistent, efficient and reliable scheme for multiphase equilibrium calculations of systems containing reservoir fluids, water and methanol. Favourable results have been obtained by comparison with diverse experimental data reported in the open literature and it is believed that the proposed correlation can be used reliably for pipeline design and operation.