Thermodynamics Research Center / ThermoML | Journal of Chemical and Engineering Data

ABSTRACT

Hydrate formation is a major flow assurance issue in the petroleum industry, and the knowledge of hydrate inhibitor distribution is essential for the economic gas transportation and processing operation. A number of measurements were made to determine the solubility of methane, the main constituent in natural gas, in methanol and ethanol aqueous solutions. The results showed that the addition of water significantly reduces the solubility in methanol and ethanol. Methanol and ethanol are two of the most commonly used gas hydrate inhibitors in the petroleum industry. The solubility data are important in developing binary interaction parameters used in predicting inhibitor distribution in multicomponent systems containing water. To fill the significant gap in the open literature data, the solubility of methane in 70 and 50 wt % methanol and ethanol solutions at 273.15 298.15 K and 0.46 44 MPa were measured. The average repeatability of the experimental results was calculated to be 2.5%. The results from this work and literature were used to optimize the interaction parameters of the CPA-SRK72 equation of state. The model calculations using a single variable binary interaction parameter was able to reproduce the new experimental results with a significant increase in accuracy.