Hydrate slurry flow property in W/O emulsion systems

Abstract

Hydrate risk management strategy has become a promising way of dealing with hydrates in subsea transportation pipelines in recent years. In this way, hydrates are allowed to form in the pipeline and are treated as a slurry flow with the help of anti-agglomerants. This work investigated the effect of hydrate formation on the flow friction factor in water in oil (W/O) emulsion systems. A series of hydrate formation and slurry flow experiments were conducted using a high pressure flow loop. Results show that the friction factor is in direct proportion to the volume fraction of hydrates formed, as it increases significantly after hydrate formation onset and then increases gradually with hydrate growing. A novel method is proposed in this work to amend the effective hydrate volume fraction and take into account the effect of hydrate agglomeration and water occlusion. In addition, it is found that the slurry flow velocity has a significant effect on the friction factor variation. As a larger flow velocity can lift the particles suspension height and cause the particles to be away from the pipe wall surface, so it gives a smaller friction factor by reducing the collisions between hydrate particles and the pipe wall surface. With the modified effective hydrate volume fraction and particle chord length distribution data, a model is proposed to estimate the hydrate caused friction factor in W/O emulsion systems, which shows a good prediction accuracy in 10% and 20% water cut conditions.