Methane hydrate formation in the presence of ZnO nanoparticle and SDS: Application to transportation and storage

Due to natural gas benefits such as less carbon dioxide production compared to the other fossil fuels, its transmission technologies to the market are noticed these years and gas hydrate storage method could be considered as an option to storage and transportation. One way to overcome the low rate gas hydrate formation is using a mixture of surfactant and nanoparticles to enhance the hydrate formation rate. Hence, in this present contribution sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) (as a surfactant) and zinc oxide nanoparticles are used to promote hydrate formation process. The experiments were carried out at the temperature of 274.65 and 276.65 K, and the initial pressure of 50 and 60 bar in different additives concentrations. The results show that these additives can increase the amount of methane consumed, the rate of methane consumed and the mole number of water to hydrate conversion increases, however, these additives do not significantly affect the gas hydrate storage. Moreover, experimental results reveals that addition of SDS to the water not only improve the stabilization of zinc oxide nanoparticles in water but also increases the solubility of methane in water by lowering the surface tension. Also, as the novel outcome, these additives (SDS+ ZnO nanoparticles) decrease the induction time, however, the final storage capacity does not change significantly.