Hydrate formation experiments were conducted for a methane/propane (90.5/9.5 mol%) gas mixture employing a new contact mode by dispersing water between silica sand to evaluate the performance of poly-N-vinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) as a kinetic hydrate inhibitor. Experiments were performed in the presence of water and different concentrations of PVP solutions (0.1, 0.5 and 1.0 wt%, respectively). Induction time before heterogeneous nucleation and subsequent hydrate growth was assessed by dispersing the water in the interstitial pores of the silica sand. The experiments were conducted at a starting pressure of 4.25 MPa and at a constant temperature of 4.0 degrees C. It was found that the induction times for 0.1% PVP solutions were about the same of pure water. For the 0.5 wt% PVP solutions, induction times were ten times higher and for 1.0 wt% PVP it was five times higher than pure water. Hydrate formation reached a plateau in one hour for the experiments conducted with pure water while it took longer time (3 h or more) for the experiments conducted in the presence of 1 wt% PVP solutions. This was due to the fact that hydrate growth rate was found to decrease with the increase in the concentration of the PVP solutions. (c) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.