Effect of Natural Polymer as Kinetic Hydrate Inhibitor Using Micro Differential Scanning Calorimetry (μDSC)

Gas hydrate is a one of the major concerns in flow assurance industry. Formation of gas hydrate would cause the plugging of the pipeline, interruption in drilling operations and damage of rig equipment. This will increase the OPEX of the field development which later reduces the revenue of oil and gas production.
One of the ways to overcome this problem is by adding kinetic inhibitor which inhibits the formation of gas hydrate. Nowadays, there has been a trend in the use of kinetic hydrate inhibitors as substitutes for thermodynamic inhibitors like methanol.
This project aims to study the effectiveness of using natural polymers as kinetic inhibitors. To achieve the main objective, firstly, a thorough research was done to fully understand the formation of hydrate and kinetic inhibitors. Next, the experiment starts with preparation of samples in the lab and later testing the samples using Micro-Differential Scanning Calorimetry equipment which measures the heat flux of a sample versus time or temperature, while the temperature of the sample is programmed, in a controlled environment.
From the experimental works of this project, it was found that both of chitosan and starch shows a kinetic inhibiting effect whereby the addition of each natural polymer were able to prolong the induction time of hydrate formation. The induction time for the natural polymers are; 1.0 wt% of chitosan (98.4 min) , 1.0 wt% of starch (96.7 min), 0.1 wt% chitosan (98.4 min) and 0.1 wt% starch (91.5 min). Comparing the induction time of each natural polymers with the blank sample (distilled water, 92.2 min), all of the samples tested were able to delay the hydrate formation, except for 0.1 wt% starch.