Application and modelling of ionic liquids as gas hydrate inhibitors

Abstract

The application and modelling of ionic liquids (ILs) as gas hydrate inhibitors have been studied. The investigation was accomplished by studying the strength of IL-water interactions, which was based on the water activity analysis both experimentally and via modelling prediction. The purpose of the comparison was to show that the COSMOthermX modelling program can well predict the activity of water in IL-water binary system, which was experimentally obtained from boiling point elevation test.

Furthermore, it is shown that water activity in the liquid phase can be used to measure the efficiency of thermodynamic hydrate inhibitors and therefore this approach was used for screening ILs as gas hydrate inhibitors. The screening results were supported by hydrate dissociation experiments carried out at Qatar University and hydrate formation results in QUB. In addition, Sigma profiles in COSMO, DFT and MD modelling were used to analyse the molecular behaviours of ILs in water environment and therefore to identify ILs with optimised structures. Initial process feasibility was also analysed from transportation and regeneration side of view. All the promising results viewed in this project proved that, as expected, ILs have great potential to be applied as gas hydrate inhibitors and thus worth further investigation in this area.

Date of Award	Jul 2017
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Queen's University Belfast
Sponsors	Qatar National Research Fund
Supervisor	David Rooney (Supervisor), Jillian Thompson (Supervisor) & Mark Muldoon (Supervisor)