Developing Hydrate Monitoring and Early Warning Systems

Abstract

A major challenge in offshore development is to ensure unimpeded flow of hydrocarbons. Managing solids such as hydrates is the key to the viability of developing a deepwater prospect. Common methods to prevent and reduce hydrate risks are generally based on injection of thermodynamic inhibitors to prevent hydrate formation or use of kinetic hydrate inhibitors to sufficiently delay hydrate nucleation/growth. Currently, the amount of inhibitor required is either calculated and/or determined based on lab experiments. The amount of inhibitor depends on various parameters, including, water cut, inhibitor loss to hydrocarbon phases, aqueous and non-aqueous fluid compositions, operating conditions. Generally a safety factor is considered and the resulting inhibitor is injected upstream without much downstream measurements. Despite the usual safety margins, gas hydrates are formed which could result in serious operational and safety concerns. This is mainly due to changes in the system conditions (e.g., rates and water cut) and/or malfunction of one of the equipment. In most cases, the amount of inhibitor is more than what is necessary and is not adjusted with seasonal changes, affecting CAPEX/OPEX. As a result of a joint industry project several novel techniques, based on downstream and online measurements have been developed, for: 1. Monitoring the hydrate safety margin to optimise inhibitor injection rates. The system determines the amount of inhibitor in the aqueous phase and the degree of inhibition they can offer. 2. Detecting the initial hydrate formation, as an early warning system against hydrate blockage. The system detects the changes in the system due to hydrate formation with the aim of giving the operator enough time to prevent a blockage. The main advantages of the above techniques are minimising the amount of inhibitor required and preventing pipeline blockages due to hydrates, hence the cost of inhibitor, impact on the environment, cost of remedial actions and deferred production. A number of techniques have been investigated during this project with some techniques selected for prototype development. The developed prototypes have been tested. In this presentation, an update on the latest results of this new approach in flow assurance control is presented.

Quantitative Risk Assessment and Management of Hydrogen Leaks from Offshore Rocket Launching Platforms

“…The Odyssey platform [20], which has dimensions of 160  92  81 m is considered in the simulation. Monitor points (MPs) are placed throughout the model to record hydrogen dynamic behavior, as shown in Figure 4.…”

Theoretical and experimental justification of the method for determining the parameters of the moment of gas hydrates mass crystallization

“…The concentration of salts and thermodynamic and kinetic inhibitors of hydrates is determined on the basis of the measurement of electrical conductivity and acoustic speed data of the chemical composition for the aqueous phase, and the stability hydrates zone is determined [7]. In [8], a method for determining the reserve of stability for the hydrate zone based on the measurement of the water content in the gas phase is proposed.…”

Method for determining the starting moment of hydrate formation on the basis of optical effects

“…Additionally, Tohidi et al [18] have proposed some techniques, such as as hydrates monitoring and warning systems, which are based on freezing point and dielectric properties measurements. They used the freezing point decrease of the aqueous phase to estimate the hydrate recovery temperature of reservoir fluids in the presence of salts and inhibitors using a simple equation.…”