Synergistic
hydrate inhibition of kinetic and thermodynamic inhibitors
is a promising strategy for preventing hydrate blockage in flowlines.
Some research has been conducted on structure II natural gas hydrates;
however, there have been few reports on the synergistic inhibition
of structure I (sI) methane hydrates. Herein, we synthesized LCST-modulated
kinetic hydrate inhibition copolymers using reversible addition-fragmentation
chain-transfer polymerization and tested their performance on sI methane
hydrate inhibition in the presence of a monoethylene glycol (MEG)
synergist. All copolymers generally inhibited hydrate formation, while
the experimental systems were thermodynamically under-inhibited by
MEG. We demonstrated that the synergistic inhibition of N-isopropylacrylamide-based copolymer and MEG are effective in preventing
hydrate blockage and hydrate re-formation for systems with methane-dominant
flow, and methane hydrate development in subsea sediments. These inhibition
polymers with narrow phase transition regions and well-controlled
lower critical solution temperatures might be helpful in preventing
fouling problems caused by unexpected precipitation and designing
more economical processes for flow assurance.
It remains a difficult task to predict the hydrate structure and conformation of potential guest molecules in one of the three canonical hydrate lattices. 1-pentanol is characteristic of molecules that...
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