Investigation of the ways to prevent hydrate formation in the gas andcondensate pipeline

Far distances between separation facilities and refineries and regional weather condition, causes the temperature downfall along the pipeline, and so it causes hydrate formation along the transferring pipelines. The above mentioned problem will cause stopping production andconsumes a lot of costs. Because of the importance of this problem, it is necessary to use a suitable procedure of accepting from the process, operational and economical points of view. In order to reach this aim, we choose a 42 km length condensate transferring pipeline with 6 outside diameter as a sample pipeline in the west region of Iran. To monitoring of hydrate formation other than the inlet and outlet, at the eight point of pipeline, temperature and pressure gauges were installed. During The test (6 months) varying amounts of inhibitor methanol wereinjected. The review of discussed points, there were many locations as possible hydrate formation was detected. Then way to prevent the formation of hydrates was investigated and it was concluded that temperature of hydrate formation for the fluid studied been 20.1 o C and inhibitor methanol is an effective way to reduce the temperature of hydrate formation. So that, by methanol injection of flow rate 33.1, 50.4, 84 and 100.8 Lit/hr hydrate formation temperature decreased to 18, 16.95, 14.85 and 13.8 o C respectively. At following research in order tooptimize the use of methanol, the pipeline simulated by Hysys 7.2 Software. According to simulation results and experimental data to using methanol and extremely effect of it in reducing hydrate formation temperature; we presented equations in order to specify the quantity ofmethanol injected into the pipeline. In continuance we tested the effect of each element on hydrate formation by changing the composition of the constituent elements.

کلیدواژه ها:

Gas hydrate ، Inhibitor ، Methanol ، Simulation