Probability distributions of gas hydrate formation |
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| Authors: | Reuben Wu Karen A Kozielski Patrick G Hartley Eric F May John Boxall Nobuo Maeda |
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| Affiliation: | 1. CSIRO Materials Science and Engineering, Ian Wark Laboratory, , Clayton, VIC, 3168 Australia;2. Centre for Energy, School of Mechanical and Chemical Engineering, The University of Western Australia, , Crawley, WA, 6009 Australia;3. CSIRO Earth Science and Resource Engineering, Ian Wark Laboratory, , Clayton, VIC, 3168 Australia |
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| Abstract: | Induction time distributions for gas hydrate formation were measured for gas mixtures of methane + propane at pressures up to 11.3 MPa using a high‐pressure automated lag time apparatus (HP‐ALTA). Measurements were made at subcooling temperatures between 4.3 and 13.5 K and, while isothermal induction times between 0 and 15,000 s were observed, the median isothermal induction times for the distributions ranged from 100 to 4000 s. A hyperbolic relationship between median induction time and subcooling was used to correlate the data. A graphical interpretation is presented that relates the two types of data that can be acquired by using the HP‐ALTA in one of two modes to study hydrate formation: induction time distributions at constant subcooling and formation temperature distributions observed during linear cooling ramps. The equivalence of these two modes provides a robust method for studying the variation of formation phenomena in different hydrate systems. © 2013 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 59: 2640–2646, 2013 |
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| Keywords: | hydrate nucleation crystal growth induction time subcooling |
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