Research Projects

Gas hydrates are a hindrance in operation of natural gas transmission pipelines as the presence of even trace amounts of water results in hydrate formation and consequently causes pipeline blockage. The hydrate plug formation obstructs the flow which can lead to leaking of pipelines or even blowouts which is a serious problem both economically and environmentally. The plugging can be avoided with the help of inhibition techniques. The increasing depths in natural gas exploration call for the usage of anti-agglomerants, which are a class of inhibitors which prevents the plugging of pipelines. Currently anti-agglomerants are being developed on a trial and error basis, so there is a need for developing a single metric based on molecular level understanding of inhibition mechanism to asses the performance of anti-agglomerants.