Cyclopentane Hydrate Formation in Water-in-Model Waxy Oil Emulsions

Mitigating flow assurance issues, such as plugging of flowlines due to hydrates and wax, is of great importance in deepwater and subsea production environments due to safety and environmental concerns, as well as high operating costs. Extensive research has been conducted on each of these flow assurance issues; however, there is limited understanding on the interaction of hydrates and wax simultaneously. The lack of fundamental understanding of hydrate formation in waxy oil emulsions motivates our current experimental work in such systems. For this work, a visualization technique is employed to investigate hydrate formation in water-in-cyclopentane and waxy oil emulsions. An Olympus BX53 polarized optical microscope with shear cell and temperature control (-50°C to 450°C) stage is used to determine rate of hydrate formation, quantify droplet size distribution, hydrate crystals and morphology. Cyclopentane hydrate formation is quantified in a paraffin containing model oil (Crystal Plus 70T) system stabilized using either solid particles or surfactants.