화학공학소재연구정보센터
Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, Vol.59, No.27, 12580-12589, 2020
Quantitative Framework for Hydrate Bedding and Transient Particle Agglomeration
Hydrate bedding is defined as the gravitational segregation of hydrate particles, leading to their accumulation at the bottom of the pipe. Previous research has shown that hydrate bedding is a physical mechanism that potentially can cause blockage formation in pipelines. The data analysis from high-pressure flow loop experiments indicated that hydrate bedding could lead to increasing pressure drop, decreasing hydrate particle transportability, and increased risk of plugging. Despite the importance, reliable quantitative models to predict the occurrence of hydrate bedding under transient agglomeration conditions are currently lacking. In this work, we propose a hydrate bedding framework that combines the modeling of particle agglomeration under dynamic conditions with a critical velocity model to predict the onset of hydrate particle bedding. By applying the population balance approach, the new framework generates a distribution of hydrate agglomerates as a function of particle concentration, mixture velocity, and physical properties of the continuous phase. The distribution of agglomerates is then divided into two parts: one part contains sizes larger than the critical size (bedding), and the second part contains sizes smaller than the critical size (suspension). With this new approach, the combined bedding-agglomeration framework predicts the onset of hydrate particle bedding with reasonable accuracy for experiments performed at a high-pressure flow loop. Potentially, this framework can be integrated in transient multiphase flow simulators to compute pressure losses and manage risks due to hydrate bedding.