• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.6 no.1 s.17
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• pp.38-45
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• 2002

Hydrates are solid cryctallines resembling ice in appearance, which are consist of a gas molecule surrounded by a cage of water molecules. Because of containning a large amount of methane, hydrates have been considered as a future energy resource. However, the formation of hydrates in the oil and gas industries has been known as a serious problem for a long time. The formation of hydrate in pipeline is common in seasonally cold or sub-sea environments with low temperatures and high pressures. Especially, hydrate plug formation becomes a real menace to flow assurance in inadequately protected transmission lines. This study was carried out for the purpose of understanding mechanism of hydrate plugging and examining formation conditions of hydrate in high pressure gas pipeline. In this study, we measured hydrate equilibrium conditions under the various flowing conditions with the methane. The results were presented both the plugging tendency and the effect of flowing velocity.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.18-27
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• 2020

This study presents flow assurance analysis in subsea pipeline considering system availability of topside in LNG-FPSO. A hydrate management strategy was established, which consisted of PVCap experiments, system availability analysis of LNG-FPSO topside, hydrate risk analysis in the pipeline, and calculation of PVCap injection concentration. The experimental data required for the determination of PVCap injection concentration were obtained by measuring the hydrate induction time of PVCap at the subcooling temperatures of 6.1, 9.2, and 12.1℃. The availability of LNG-FPSO topside system for 20 years was 89.3%, and the longest downtime of 50 hours occurred 2.9 times per year. The subsea pipeline model for multiphase flow simulation was created using field geometry data. As a result of risk analysis of hydrate plugging using subsea pipeline model, hydrate was formed at the end of flowline in 23.2 hours under the condition of 50 hours shutdown. The injection concentration of PVCap was determined based on the PVCap experiment results. The hydrate plugging in subsea pipeline of LNG-FPSO can be completely prevented by injecting PVCap 0.25 wt% 2.9 times per year.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2006.06a
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• pp.425-428
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• 2006

Natural gas hydrate has been a major problem for its plugging nature in the pipeline. With the demand of deep-water production, the importance of flow assurance technology, preventing hydrate, asphaltene and wax in the pipeline becomes bigger Kinetic models combined with the flow simulator are being developed to explain the nature of hydrate plug formation in the pipeline. To simulate the hydrate plug formation, each stage including the nucleation, growth and agglomeration should be considered. The hydrate nucleation is known to be stochastic and is believed hard to be predicted. Recent publications showed hydrate growth and agglomeration can be observed rigorously using a particle size analyzer. However properties of the hydrate should be investigated to model the growth and agglomeration. The attractive force between hydrate particles, supposed to be the capillary force, was revealed to be stochastic. Alternative way to model the hydrate agglomeration is to simulate by the discrete element method. Those parameters, particle size distribution, attractive force, and growth rate are embedded into the kinetic model which is combined Into the flow simulator. When compared with the flowloop experimental data, hydrate kinetic model combined into a flow simulator showed good results. With the early results, the hydrate kinetic model is promising but needs more efforts to improve it.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.618-621
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• 2005

In this study, the phenomena of hydrate formation and inhibition were investigated according to varying the concentrations using methanol and ethylene glycol as chemical additives. The results reveal that the used additives display better inhibition effects compared to pure water by decreasing the formation temperature and the inhibition performance of methanol is superior to that of ethylene glycol. As a conclusion, the plugging phenomena of flowline in natural gas product ion. subsea and frozen field pipelines can be predicted by examining the hydrate formation and inhibition conditions. Specifically, the results of this study can be applied to the selection of the prevention criteria and method of hydrate formation.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.56-64
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• 2020

This study presents the hydrate induction time of PVCap according to subcooling temperature, salt concentration, and MEG concentration in order to analyze the inhibition effect of PVCap in various production environments of offshore gas fields. A high-pressure hydrate generator was made for the hydrate formation experiments. It was verified that the apparatus had sufficient reliability by comparing the results of hydrate equilibrium conditions and induction time from the apparatus with published reference data. As the subcooling temperature increased from 6.1℃ to 12.1℃, the induction time of PVCap concentration of 0.1~1 wt% decreased. When the salt concentration increased from 3 wt% to 7 wt%, the induction time was reduced by up to 78% under the condition of 0.5 wt% PVCap due to polymer structure degradation by salt effect. In the case of HHI (hybrid hydrate inhibitor) made by mixing MEG 10 wt% and PVCap, the change in induction time was not large compared to PVCap 1 wt% due to the under-inhibition effect. On the other hand, the hydrate inhibition efficiency of HHI with MEG 20wt% increased 1.7 times compared to PVCap.

• Transactions of the KSME C: Technology and Education
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.45-53
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• 2015

The fact that gas hydrate and/or paraffin wax is frequently plugged in offshore pipeline has been become very significant for offshore piepline flow assurance. An active electrical heating along pipeline has adapted in resolving flow assurance problem like as gas hydrate and wax plugging. This study represents a novel internal-swirled heater which was designed and fabricated for more effective heating and thermal mixing through pipeline. The internal-swirled heater suggested in this study shows higher thermal mixing performances than the conventional external-traced heater.