Evaluation and Comparison of the Hydrate Inhibition Tendency of Hydrogen using Unisim and Towler and Mokhatab's Correlation

Abstract

Hydrate formation in pipelines has been a serious flow assurance issue in the oil and gas industry hence several methods have been developed to predict the conditions which favor its formation in order to develop a proper mitigation plan to control its formation. This study evaluated the inhibition effect of hydrogen gas on a methane / methane gas mixture using UNISIM software and Towler & Mokhatab correlation. After which the effectiveness of this prediction method was determined by comparing their predictions with experimentally obtained data. The predictions of hydrate formation temperature of the methane / methane gas mixtures by Unisim and correlation all showed a decrease in their hydrate formation temperatures when mixed with hydrogen gas. An error evaluation on the two prediction methods showed that the UNISIM prediction has a better prediction than the correlation for all the methane / methane gas mixture because it predicted hydrate formation temperature closer to the experimental predictions.