Significant
portions of the oil reserves in Brazil are located
in deep or ultradeep waters. Oil production from these reservoirs
implies a constant awareness of gas hydrate formation. The petroleum
industry uses thermodynamic inhibitors to reduce the temperature and
increase the pressure of hydrate formation in order to ensure hydrate-free
production. Because ethanol is abundant in Brazil and it also works
as a hydrate thermodynamic inhibitor, its use is more common. However,
experimental data of hydrate phase equilibria (HPE) at high ethanol
concentrations are scarce, and there is a limited characterization
of the existing data. This study reports LHV equilibrium data for
C2H6 and a mixture of CH4/C2H6 at high ethanol concentrations and compiles the equilibrium
data with ethanol from the literature to evaluate their consistency
as hydrate-inhibited systems as well as to present a comparison between
predictive approaches for hydrates with ethanol. We apply a consistency
test with three criteria to characterize all HPE data with ethanol
in the literature data. The experimental data were measured for up
to 45 wt % of ethanol. The CH4, CO2, and C2H6 hydrate data deviated from the average behavior
established by the criteria for 5 and 15, 2 and 5, and 5 wt %, respectively.
The C3H8 hydrate data from the literature obeys
the average behavior of the test criteria as well as the C2H6 and CH4/C2H6 data
measured. All predictions were in general agreement with the experimental
data for ethanol concentrations of up to 15 wt %.
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