Simulation of Hydrate Growth in Steady State Flow Lines

Gas hydrate formation is a slow process and equilibrium hydrate calculations may severely overestimate hydrate problems in sub-sea pipelines transporting unprocessed reservoir well streams. This paper presents a pipeline simulator that uses a compositional hydrate kinetics model to simulate the hydrate growth rate, limited by both mass and heat transfer. Whether it is feasible to transport gas hydrates along with the fluid or hydrate plugging occurs depends on the amount of hydrate, the liquid loading and the liquid shear rate. Here a shear rate dependent hydrate slurry model accounts for important non-Newtonian slurry effects.