Use of a modification of the Patel-Teja equation of state plus van der Waals-Platteeuw theory based model for predicting hydrate phase boundary of methane-ethylene glycol-water system from ice point data of aqueous solution

A major concern with the oil/gas pipelines and production/processing facilities is the possibility of flow restriction and blockage due to gas hydrate formation, which can lead to serious operational, economic and safety problems. Organic inhibitors such as methanol and ethylene glycol are normally used for preventing gas hydrate formation. Accurate knowledge of hydrate phase equilibrium in the presence of inhibitors is therefore crucial to avoid gas hydrate formation problems and to design/optimize production, transportation and processing facilities. Experimental data are needed for developing models capable of predicting hydrate phase behavior. In general, measuring hydrate phase equilibrium in the presence of inhibitor is more difficult than measuring ice point of inhibitor aqueous solution, particularly at high concentrations of inhibitor. This is partly due to the fact that the presence of inhibitor shifts hydrate phase boundaries to high pressures, which leads to difficulties in hydrate phase equilibria measurements. M this work, we examine the need for hydrate phase equilibrium data in the presence of inhibitor (ethylene glycol) aqueous solutions for tuning parameters of a thermodynamic model based on a modification of the Patel-Teja equation of state + van der Waals-Platteeuw theory. We consider two cases for tuning: use of ice point data or, using hydrate phase equilibrium data. The results show that using only ice point data of inhibitor aqueous solution for tuning thermodynamic model can lead to acceptable predictions of hydrate phase equilibrium in the presence of inhibitor and therefore experimental hydrate phase equilibrium data are not strictly indispensable.