Experimental investigation and ANN modelling on CO₂ hydrate kinetics in multiphase pipeline systems

Gas hydrates are progressively becoming a key concern when determining the economics of a reservoir due to flow interruptions, as offshore reserves are produced in ever deeper and colder waters. The creation of a hydrate plug poses equipment and safety risks. No current existing models have the feature of accurately predicting the kinetics of gas hydrates when a multiphase system is encountered. In this work, Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) are developed to study and predict the effect of the multiphase system on the kinetics of gas hydrates formation. Primarily, a pure system and multiphase system containing crude oil are used to conduct experiments. The details of the rate of formation for both systems are found. Then, these results are used to develop an A.I. model that can be helpful in predicting the rate of hydrate formation in both pure and multiphase systems. To forecast the kinetics of gas hydrate formation, two ANN models with single layer perceptron are presented for the two combinations of gas hydrates. The results indicated that the prediction models developed are satisfactory as R² values are close to 1 and M.S.E. values are close to 0. This study serves as a framework to examine hydrate formation in multiphase systems.