Study on the Effectiveness of Ionic Liquid as Low Dosage Hydrate Inhibitor (LDID) for Flow Assurance in Pipeline.

This research project is an experimental approach to study the effectiveness of
ionic liquids as low dosage hydrate inhibitors (LDHI) for flow assurance in
pipelines. In addition, this project is also aimed to gain a better understanding
about gas hydrates and choosing new potential ionic liquids as LDHI. Gas
hydrates are solid crystalline compounds formed by water and molecules like
natural components at low temperature and high pressure conditions. Hydrates
formation often occur and block gas pipelines which causes production failure
and safety hazards.
The conventional method to prevent the formation of gas hydrates is by using
large quantities of thermodynamics inhibitors, which is expensive and dangerous
to the environment. Thus, suitable new class of ionic liquids such as low dosage
hydrate inhibitor(LDHI) that are strong and effective needs to be discovered to
replace the conventional method. The criteria of ionic liquids were studied -
stabilities, hydrophilic, tuneable organic cations and anions and extremely l_ow
vapour pressures.
In this study, parameters such as kinetic rate and induction time need to be
experimentally considered and investigated by using High Pressure Kinetics
Measurement (HPKM) for bulk volume. Currently for HPKM, the temperature at
273.65 K and pressure at 35bar is selected to be operating condition for the
experiment of hydrate formation as data were recorded every second by data
acquisition system. This experiment was continued by adding LDHI (0.1 wt%,
0.5wt%, l.Owt %) and using different pressures (25bar, 30bar and 35bar) to test
the effects. However, 10.0 wt% high concentration ofEMIM BF4 is used for the
study of ionic liquid effectiveness as thermodynamic inhibitors.
The findings of this work will contribute to a more environment friendly and
economical hydrate inhibitors for usage in the oil and gas industrials.