The oil and gas industry is often plagued by the formation of clathrate hydrates in oil pipelines.
While the industry originally had a heuristic of avoidance of clathrate hydrates they are moving to
a heuristic of risk management. To successfully implement a risk management heuristic, time
dependent phenomena of clathrate hydrate formation and flowline plugging must be known. The
study of time dependent phenomena of formation and agglomeration are investigated using a TA
Instruments AR-G2 rheometer with a pressure cell capable of operating at up to 13.8 MPa.
Pressurized rheological experiments examine clathrate hydrates formed in situ. Both shear and
oscillatory experiments have been conducted on the samples, giving flow and viscoelastic
parameters. Shear experiments show sharp increases in viscosity upon clathrate hydrate
formation indicating rapid aggregation. Transient oscillation experiments show a sharp increase
in the elastic and loss moduli followed by a decrease in the loss moduli. Thus, both in situ
clathrate hydrate formation and annealing are quantified. In addition these oscillatory
measurements provided a novel technique for non-destructive investigation of clathrate hydrate
aggregation over time.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/1147 |
| Date | 07 1900 |
| Creators | Rensing, Patrick J., Liberatore, Matthew W., Koh, Carolyn A., Sloan, E. Dendy |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Rights | Sloan, E. Dendy; Koh, Carolyn A.; Liberatore, Matthew W. |
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