Flow Properties of Hydrate‐in‐Water Slurries

Abstract: Natural gas hydrates have been proposed as a means to capture associated gas produced on offshore oil platforms. Hydrates are produced by bringing the gas into contact with liquid water, resulting in a hydrate‐in‐water slurry. It is further suggested that the hydrates be mixed with the crude oil, resulting in an hydrate‐in‐oil slurry that might be transported to shore in shuttle tankers, or in long‐distance pipelines. A hydrate laboratory has been built to obtain the data necessary to evaluate such processes. The laboratory contains a high‐pressure tube viscometer in which the flow properties of water‐based and oil‐based hydrate slurries can be studied under laminar and turbulent pipe flow conditions. In this paper, the experimental equipment is described, and experiments on the flow properties of hydrate‐in‐water slurries are presented. It was found that the slurry viscosity increases with increasing hydrate concentration, and also that the hydrate slurries approach the same frictional pressure drop as the carrying water in the turbulent flow regime, regardless of hydrate concentration.