Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, Vol.54, No.26, 6812-6824, 2015
Cubic Plus Association Equation of State for Flow Assurance Projects
Thermodynamic hydrate inhibitors such as methanol, ethanol, (mono) ethylene glycol (MEG), and triethylene glycol (TEG) are widely used in the oil and gas industry. On modeling these compounds, we show here how the CPA equation of state was implemented in an in-house process simulator as an in-built model: To validate the implementation, we show calulations for binary systems containing hydrate inhibitors and water or hydrocarbons using the Cubic Plus Association (CPA) and Soave-Redlich-Kwong (SRK) equation of states, also comparing against experimental data. For streams containing natural gas and water, CPA was applied to calculate the loss of the inhibitor to the vapor phase as a function of temperature and pressure. Simulations of dehydration units using TEG were conducted, and the CPA results were compared with that of two commercial simulators which used their available thermodynamic packages for glycol applications, proving that the CPA calculations are in good agreement with these models and showing that this is an adequate way to simulate complex matures containing natural gas, water, and hydrate inhibitors.