Séminaire du Professeur Michele CIULLA

Séminaire du Professeur Michele Ciulla de l'Université Chieti-Pescara

The Two Faces of Clathrates: Methane Hydrate Inhibition and Hydrogen Storage Applications

Résumé :

Clathrate hydrates, ice-like inclusion compounds that form under conditions of low temperature and high pressure, have often posed challenges but also valuable opportunities in the energy sector. In the field of flow assurance, they represent a problem since their formation causes plugs in oil and gas pipelines. To avoid such events, thermodynamic or kinetic chemical inhibitors are generally added, which disrupt the structure of water, preventing formation and/or growth of hydrates. To identify alternative chemical-free approaches to hydrate inhibition, the effects of electromagnetic radiation in the Terahertz (THz) domain were investigated. In this presentation, it will show how hydrate formation is inhibited by irradiating the water/methane system with THz radiation in the spectral region between 1 and 5 THz.

While their formation poses operational challenges in the oil and gas industry, clathrate hydrates have gathered significant research interest for their potential in gas separation and storage/transportation applications. In this contest, clathrate hydrates of hydrogen could represent a valid alternative in the field of hydrogen storage and transportation for large, stationary applications. In that case, however, the gravimetric amount of stored hydrogen drops to less than 1 wt % from ca. 5.6 wt % without a co-former. Another factor restraining the entrapment of hydrogen into a clathrate matrix appears to be of a kinetic origin, in that the mass transfer of hydrogen into clathrates is limited by the macroscopic scale of the gas–water interfaces involved in their formation. The final part of presentation shows some developments of a kinetically efficient method for preparing hydrogen hydrates, which is based on the formation of amphiphile-aided reverse micelles to reduce the size of hydrate forming gas–water interfaces down to tens of nanometers, and macro-emulsions/binary systems.