The Centre for Gas Hydrate Research, with its extensive experimental and modelling capabilities, is well equipped to address various technical problems associated with gas hydrates and flow assurance, including:
- Measuring and predicting the hydrate stability zones for various hydrocarbons with and without formation water and/or organic inhibitors
- Measurement of the amount and composition of various phases in the presence of gas hydrates
- Determining the hydrate stability zone in porous media
- Kinetics of hydrate formation and the effect of hydrate promoters
- Performance of LDHIs
- Transportability of fluid systems containing gas hydrates (e.g., effectiveness of anti-agglomerants)
- Wax WAT/WDT measurements and wax-hydrate equilibria
- Designing drilling fluids for offshore and deepwater operations
- Best practices for dissociation of gas hydrate plugs
- Avoiding gas hydrate problems in well clean-up and testing, WAG injection operations, pipeline start-ups and shut-downs
- Simulating various gas hydrate formation and production scenarios
- Freezing points/boiling points of aqueous solutions of organic inhibitors and/or electrolytes
- Solubility and salting out of electrolytes in aqueous solutions of organic inhibitors (e.g., halite deposition)
The Centre has provided technical support in solving gas hydrate problems to a number of major hydrocarbon production and service companies, including Shell, BP, Marathon, Baker-Hughes, E. Wood Ltd, Genesis Oil and Gas, TOTAL, Sasol, Messer UK, Mearsk, OMV, Rhodia, Blackwatch Petroleum Services, Baker Petrolite, CSIRO, Occidental, Chevron, Ondeo, and Castrol.