SYSTEM COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS FOR PREDICTING GAS HYDRATE FORMATION

Gas hydrates pose one of the major flow assurance problems in natural gas production, field processing, and distribution. In order to militate against the costly intervention and the downtime resulting from treating hydrates, it is expedient to have an effective strategy of predicting the conditions at which they are formed. Various methods have been used in time past to predict hydrate formation conditions; such includes the vapour-solid equilibrium ratio as proposed in the Katz gravity method, the John modified k-factor method, and empirical correlations. In this study, a systematical approach is used to carry out a comparative analysis of existing correlations for predicting hydrate formation conditions, and to determine the suitable method to apply for different gas specific gravities and operating scenarios. Comparing the experimental value of temperature and the values generated from each of the different correlation used, shows that the Towler and Mokhatab correlation (regarded herein as T&M) showed a very high level of accuracy for all range of specific gravity and at temperatures below 60oF.