Chongwei Xiao

Research Focuses on Gas-Hyrdrate Inhibitors

June 22. 2009 -Assistant Professor Hertanto Adidharma discovered a new class of gas-hydrate inhibitors that act as both thermodynamic and kinetic inhibitor. These dual function inhibitors could shift the equilibrium hydrate stability curve to a lower temperature (thermodynamic inhibition effect) and, at the same time, retard the hydrate formation by slowing down the hydrate nucleation rate (kinetic inhibition effect). No inhibitors available today can offer both thermodynamic and kinetic inhibition effects. The dual function inhibitors are needed because exploration and production of oil and gas moves to deeper seas, where temperature and pressure conditions in the field become strongly in favor of hydrate formation and the addition of conventional inhibitor would be expensive and environmentally prohibitive.

The novel gas-hydrate inhibitors are ionic liquids that have strong electrostatic charges and at the same time can form hydrogen bonding with water. The study, which uses a high-pressure micro-DSC, shows that the new inhibitors outperform the existing commercial kinetic inhibitors even at high degrees of supercooling and at the same time provide similar thermodynamic inhibition effect to commercial thermodynamic inhibitors.

Future research will seek understanding of the inhibition performance of this class of inhibitors leading to properly tailored ionic liquids. A UW graduate student Chongwei Xiao contributed to this project.