Experimental determination of dissociation temperatures and enthalpies of methane, ethane and carbon dioxide hydrates up to 90 MPa by using a multicycle calorimetric procedure

Abstract

This work presents the application of a multicycle procedure to determine the dissociation temperature and enthalpy of gas hydrates using high-pressure microcalorimetry (HP-µDSC). In the multicycle procedure, a sample of water in contact with the gas undergoes successive cooling and warming cycles below hydrate dissociation temperature, increasing the conversion of water into hydrate. This technique has been previously used in literature to increase water conversion during carbon dioxide hydrate formation up to 2.0 MPa, but its applicability has not been assessed for higher pressures and with different guest molecules. New experimental equilibrium data for methane, ethane, and carbon dioxide hydrates were obtained through HP-µDSC up to 90 MPa using the multicycle procedure. The advantages and limitations of the method are discussed. Dissociation temperatures are in good agreement with data previously obtained from a HP-µDSC standard method, which confirms the reliability to determine this property by both methods. Nevertheless, the enthalpy of hydrate dissociation obtained by the direct integration of thermograms provided by the HP-µDSC standard method is not accurate. Thus, it is usually calculated by using the Clapeyron equation from equilibrium temperature and pressure data obtained by the HP-µDSC standard method, as presented in previous work. The new dissociation enthalpies presented in this work were obtained experimentally by direct integration of thermograms using the multicycle procedure, which provides accurate data as the conversion is very high (above 97% of water converts into hydrate), the baselines are clearly established, and no exothermic peak related to metastable phases is observed.