Modelling and experimental study of hydrate formation kinetics of natural gas‐water‐surfactant system in a multi‐tube bubble column reactor

To promote the heat and mass transfer during the hydrate formation process, an internal spiral‐grooved tube (ISGT) was proposed as the reaction tube in a large‐scale multi‐tube bubble column reactor with external slurry circulation. In order to investigate such multi‐component gas (natural gas)‐water‐surfactant systems during the hydrate formation process in the ISGT, based on the solute permeation model and Kolmogorov isotropic turbulence theory, a CFD method combined with the population balance model (PBM) was utilized to simulate gas‐liquid mass transfer coefficient. Then, the hydrate formation kinetics model in ISGT was modelled based on the model proposed by Kashchiev and Firoozabadi. The hydrate formation experiments were carried out in the multi‐tube bubble column reactor at six different pressure‐temperature‐circulating flow velocities of piston pump regimes to investigate the actual formation process of natural gas hydrate. The experimental results were then used to finetune the optimized parameters to facilitate accurate model predictions.