HYDRATES INHIBITION USING IONIC LIQUID

The formation of gas hydrates in gas and oil production and transmission pipelines leads to severe safety problems and huge economic loss, which has been the subject of long-standing problems. Gas hydrates can form in both gas producing and oil-producing wells. Conditions that favors gas hydrates formation is a combination of low temperature (around 32°F to 60°F) with high pressure (>600psia) for crystalline structures to form and also high concentrations of the gas stream and presence of H20. As exploration and production moves to deeper seas, temperature and pressure conditions in the field favors hydrate formation, and thus the existing thermodynamic hydrate inhibitors are still not believed to give an economic solution. It has also been identified for some cases that the combination of thermodynamic and kinetic inhibitors is needed to give better results. This research examines on the application of Ionic Liquids as hydrate inhibitors and the discovery of dual function thermo-kinetic inhibitors, and thus its effectiveness is analyzed. The objectives is to compare the effectiveness of ionic liquid between EMIM-BF4 and BMIM-BF4 as hydrate inhibitor and to identify the most effective concentration for ionic liquid as the hydrate inhibitors. Experiment is conducted using differential scanning calorimeter (DSC). From the results, Ionic Liquid is observed to be effective at delaying the hydrated nucleation time and also shifting the hydrate phase equilibrium. From the laboratory experiment shows that EMIM-BF4 is found to be more effective than BMIM-BF4 since the induction time for EMIM-BF4 is longer than BMIM-BF4. Ionic Liquid is observed to be effective at a low concentration compared to the conventional ways and therefore are expected to have significant economic and environmental advantages.