Effect of additives on formation and decomposition kinetics of methane clathrate hydrates: Application in energy storage and transportation
Methane gas storage and transportation via clathrate hydrates is proposed to be a potential solution for large scale energy storage. In this work, we study the formation and decomposition kinetics of methane hydrates (MH) in a laboratory scale unstirred crystallizer. The present investigation demonstrates comparative studies of hydrate formation and dissociation kinetics in the presence of tetrahydrofuran (55.6 and 27.8 mmol/mol, 5.56 and 2.78 mol THF) and sodium dodecyl sulphate (1 mg/g, 0.1 wt% SDS) Moreover, the storage capacity and hydrate formation kinetics in both the systems are discussed. In a recent work, enhanced methane hydrate growth in the presence of THF at close to atmospheric conditions was demonstrated. The emphasis of the current work is to study the stability of hydrates to understand dissociation kinetics by measuring the rate of hydrate decomposition at different temperatures. Hydrate stability measurements were performed at 8, 3, 2, 10, and 20 degC to study the decomposition rates of MH and self preservation in presence of the two additives THF and SDS.