Estimation of Vaporization Rate of Aqueous Chemical Gas Hydrate Inhibitors Using a Modeling Tool

Abstract

Gas hydrate is a longstanding problem in natural gas industry. Hydrate inhibition using chemical inhibitors is the most widely used method to prevent gas hydrate formation, and they are costly chemicals that are introduced into the natural gas production flow streams. Hydrate inhibition utilizes injection of glycol or methanol into a process stream, where it combines with the condensed aqueous phase to lower the hydrate formation temperature at a given pressure. In this work, easy-to-use mathematical predictive tools are developed for the prediction of vapor pressure of aqueous chemical hydrate inhibitors (methanol, ethylene glycol, diethylene glycol, and triethylene glycol) as a function of temperature and hydrate inhibitor mass fraction in condensed aqueous phase. The proposed tools showed promising results with average absolute deviation being around 1.5%.