Dataset on investigating nucleation and growth kinetics of methane hydrate in aqueous methanol solutions

Abstract

This work systematically investigates the effect of methanol (MeOH) in a wide range of concentrations (0, 1, 2.5, 5, 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50 mass%) on methane hydrate nucleation and growth kinetics. Multiple measurements of gas hydrate onset temperatures and pressures for CH4–H2O and CH4–MeOH–H2O systems were performed by ramp cooling experiments (1 K/h) using sapphire rocking cell RCS6 apparatus. The dataset comprises 96 ramp experiments conducted under identical initial conditions for each solution (gas pressure of 8.1 MPa at 295 K). The reported hydrate onset temperatures and pressures range within 248–282 K and 6.2–7.5 MPa, respectively. The methane hydrate onset subcooling was calculated using literature data on the three-phase gas–aqueous solution–gas hydrate equilibrium for the studied systems. The study determined the numerical values of the shape and scale parameters of gamma distributions that describe the empirical dependences of methane hydrate nucleation cumulative probability as a function of hydrate onset subcooling in the aqueous methanol solutions. Gas uptake curves were analyzed to characterize the kinetics of methane hydrate growth under polythermal conditions at different methanol concentrations.