Investigation into the effect of subcooling on the kinetics of hydrate formation

A novel multi-test tube rocking cell unit has been used to generate large amounts of data to investigate the relationship between gas hydrate formation induction time and subcooling. The experiments included tests to determine the induction time for a natural gas and water system at a wide range of pressures and subcooling. Over 500 induction times were measured at pressure ranging from 2 to 17 MPa. The statistical analysis of the results shows that the commencement of hydrate growth is logarithmically related to subcooling, and that the scatter of the onset of hydrate growth is greater at higher subcooling. It was also shown that the induction time for hydrate growth was lower at higher pressures at similar levels of subcooling.