Journal of Loss Prevention in The Process Industries, Vol.23, No.3, 379-384, 2010
Prediction of methanol loss in vapor phase during gas hydrate inhibition using Arrhenius-type functions
Gas hydrate formation in natural gas and NU. systems can block pipelines, equipment, and instruments, restricting or interrupting flow leading to safety hazards to production/transportation systems and to substantial economic risks The amount of hydrate inhibitor to be injected not only must be sufficient to prevent freezing of the inhibitor water phase, but also must be sufficient to provide for the equilibrium vapor phase content of the inhibitor The vapor pressure of methanol must be high enough so that significant quantities will vaporize Therefore to estimate methanol vaporization losses, It is necessary to develop a new predictive tool In this work, a simple correlation, which is a mathematically compact and reasonably accurate equation containing few tuned coefficients, is presented here for the prediction of methanol vaporization loss and vapor pressures of aqueous methanol solutions as a function of temperature and methanol mass fraction in aqueous solutions using a novel and theoretically meaningful Arrhenius-type asymptotic exponential function and Vandermonde matrix The proposed col relation predicts the vapor pressures of aqueous methanol solutions for temperatures up to 100 degrees C and methanol vaporization loss for temperature between -16 and 16 degrees C Estimations are found to be in excellent agreement with the reliable data in the literature where the average absolute deviation from data is less than 1 5%. The tool developed in this study can be of immense practical value for the engineers and scientists to have a quick check on the methanol vaporization loss and vapor pressures of aqueous methanol solutions at various conditions without opting lot any experimental measurements. In particular, chemical and process engineers would find the approach to be user-friendly with transparent calculations involving no complex expressions (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved
Keywords:Vaporization loss;Methanol;Hydrate inhibition;Vapor pressure;Arrhenius function;Vandemonde matrix