Freezing Point Depression Method for Hydrate Monitoring

This report gives an extensive review on the overall project works which
include background of study, problem statement, significance of study,
objectives and scope of work, literature review, methodology, and results and
discussion. The introduction section describes the overview of natural gas
hydrates as pipeline plugging and the importance of hydrate monitoring method.
The critical problem associated with injecting thermodynamic inhibitors to
prevent hydrate formation is adequate amount of thermodynamic inhibitors to
ensure the operating conditions falls out of the hydrate stability zone and at the
same time optimize the operating costs. The primary objective of this project is
to determine the suitable operating pressure and temperature limits for
deepwater fields producing 50 - 65 mole percent of methane (C~) using
Freezing Point Depression method. The literature review section provides the
theoretical aspect of the work and some correlations that will be used in
accordance to the FPD method. The methodology section discusses the work
need to be done to accomplish the project objectives. There are 3 main tasks in
this work which are experimental, correlations and simulation. The experimental
procedures and the prototype equipment used will be discussed at length in
Chapter 3. Results from experimental work and correlations are presented in the
Chapter 4. These experimental data showed high degree of precision which
indicates that this method is applicable and practical. The hydrate phase
boundary obtained using the correlations are presented in the same chapter.
These results are compared with simulation results using PVT -sim. The overall
outcome of the project is a graphical representation of the suitable operating
conditions for reservoir fluid composed of 50 - 65 mol% of methane. The
limitations of the prototype equipment will also be discussed in the same
chapter. All of the information provided in this report is concluded in the
conclusion section.