Development of Thermodynamic Model with Gopal’s Constants for the Inhibition of Gas Hydrates Formation in Gas Pipeline

Hydrate deposition remains a very willful one in the oil and gas industry and costs the industry billions of dollars worldwide for prevention and remediation in pipelines and flowlines. An economic and environmentally friendly solution to the prevention of hydrate formation is prohibitively expensive.

In this study, a thermodynamic model for hydrate inhibition in gas pipelines by applying the Joule Thomson Expansion phenomenon was developed. The model is a function of the specific gravity, initial and final temperatures, and the initial and final pressures. This developed model comes with the Gopal's constants that make the model trainable to fit data from various expansion processes.

The results obtained for sweet gases were compared with that presented by the Gas Processors Suppliers Association (GPSA) and an error of less than 5% (R2 = 0.9629) was observed. The effect on sour gases was also considered. The pseudo-reduced temperature ranges from 1.05<Tr<3.0 and the pseudo-reduced pressure ranges from 0.2<Pr<5.4. But at extreme values of both pressure and temperature, the result of the proposed model deviates significantly from that of GPSA. The robustness of this model and its ease of use makes it applicable for real-time calculations in the transportation and processing of natural gases.