Orthogonal-experimental research on stability effecting factors of hydrate slurry

Hydrate slurry technique provides a practical method in preventing hydrate blockage and transporting oil-gas-mixture. The key to this technology is the stability of hydrate slurry, which is influenced by many factors. In this paper, several orthogonal experiments were designed to analyze the influence of factors in temperature, pressure, water-oil ratio and gas-liquid ratio on the hydrate slurry stability, and hydrate volume fraction ratio, water phase conversion ratio and hydrate density were taken as the representative evaluation parameters of the hydrate slurry stability. On the basis of previously-mentioned hydrate formation experiments, the influences of these four effecting factors on the stability were determined through programming, and then the experimental conditions were divided into several different patterns. Finally, the future research direction about the hydrate flow stability was discussed.