(66h) Inhibitory Action of Cost-Effective Ionic Liquids Methane Hydrates

Tausif Altamash^a , M. Fahed Qureshi^a,, Majeda Khraisheh^a* and Mert Atilhan^b

^aDepartment of Chemical Engineering, Qatar University, P.O.Box 2713, Doha, Qatar.

^b Department of Chemical Engineering , Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA.

The gas hydrate formation is the most common experience during transportation of natural gas from one place to another place. Actually, transportation takes place through pipeline under high pressure and low temperature and this thermodynamic condition trigger the hydrate formation. Initially formation of hydrate started from encapsulation of gas molecule by water molecules as particle which turn into large size and block the pipeline at the end. In order to avoid this shutdown process chemical inhibitors like Methanol and Methyl ethylene glycol or salts came into light, but they give unavoidable environmental and mechanical risks. Therefore, to overcome those issues ILs being used since recent years as greener low dosage inhibitor to protect environmental hazards. ILs said to be a dual nature (thermodynamic and kinetic) designer gas hydrate inhibitors, nevertheless the cost of ILs can not be ignored. In the search of cost effective ILs, protic ionic liquids (PILs) can be tested to use up to larger dosage. PILs are another class of ionic liquids (ILs) that having great opportunity to fit in multidisciplinary application, especially in electrochemistry. PILs are synthesized on proton transfer phenomena, on addition of Brønsted acid and Brønsted base. Chemically, the presence of acceptor-donor site provides a hydrogen bond to build it up and this easy rout of reaction cut preparation cost effectively. However, in the presence of water PILs strengthen the ion−ion water-PIL interaction. The affinity of PILs with water provide an advantage to use them as gas hydrate inhibitor which may disrupt the water structure and thus slow down the process of gas hydrate formation up to some extent. in this study very first ever PILs [EA][Of], [DMA][Of] and [DMEA][Of]) [TBMA][Of]) were used at 5 and 10 wt.% respectively to investigate the thermodynamic and kinetic inhibitions at different ascending pressure conditions using the rocking cell assembly (RC-5) for methane gas. Investigations reaves that HVLE curve was shifted by 2.0 ± 0.1 ^oC and hydrate formation was delayed by 2 hrs at high pressure conditions (~120 bars). However, kinetic inhibition also performed well and enhanced the time of gas hydrate formation. Moreover, poly ethylene oxide (PEO) were added to examine the synergistic behaviour of duo (PILs+PEO)

AcknowledgementThis work was made possible by NPRP grant for # 6-330-2-140 (TA) and GSRA # 2-1-0603-14012 (FQ) for from the Qatar National Research Fund (a member of Qatar Foundation). The statements made herein are solely the responsibility of the authors.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: m.Khraisheh@qu.edu.qa