Study of the Comprehensive Kinetic Model of Natural Gas Hydrate Formation in a Water-in-Oil Emulsion Flow System

Hydrate growth is influenced by many factors, including thermodynamics, kinetics, mass and heat transfer, and so on. There is thus a practical significance in establishing a model that comprehensively considers these influencing factors for hydrate crystal growth in multiphase transportation pipelines. On this basis, this paper presents a more practical and comprehensive bidirectional growth model of hydrate shells for an actual pipeline system. Thermodynamic phase equilibrium theory and water molecule penetration theory are applied in this model to develop a method for calculating the concentration change of hydrate-forming guest molecules and the permeation rate of water molecules. The temperatures on both sides of the hydrate shell are predicted by the heat transfer model. Simultaneously, decreasing the mass transfer coefficient with continuous hydrate growth is used to describe the problem in which the mass transfer efficiency decreases with a thickened hydrate shell. Then, the hydrate growth kinetic parameters of the pipeline system are optimized according to hydrate growth experiments conducted in a high-pressure flow loop and the microscopic characteristics of the particles were provided using the PVM and FBRM probes. The improved hydrate growth model can improve the prediction accuracy of hydrate formation in slurry systems.