As the crude oil and gas resources are depleted,a growing number of harvests require exploration of the world’s remote locations with harsh conditions including off-shore reservoirs.The low-temperature and high- pressure conditions at many of these reservoirs provide ideal environments for the formation of clathrate or gas hydrates.The flow assurance issue arising from the formation of hydrates inside the extraction pipeline imposes serious impedance to the continuous off-shore production and operation.Thus, research in the petroleum industry had been focused on inhibiting the formation of gas hydrates.Past works mainly concerned about the injection of bulk thermodynamic inhibitors such as alcohol and glycols to shift the thermodynamic equilibrium and recent works have explored the application of a small amount of kinetic inhibitors such anti-agglomerants and imides to the oil/gas pipe line.As one of kinetic inhibitors,this work employs hydrophobic silica nanoparticles at interfaces of hydrate and water and will present hydrate growth behaviors.
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