PhD Thesis: CO2 removal from a CO2-CH4 mixture by gas hydrate cristallization: influence of additives and effect of operating conditions.

Abstract: The separation of CO2 from a gas mixture by crystallization of gas hydrates is a process that could eventually provide an attractive alternative to the conventional techniques used for CO2 capture. The aim of this thesis was to evaluate the potential of this "hydrate" process to separate CO2 from a CO2-CH4 gas mixture, rich in CO2. We have studied in particular the selectivity of the
separation toward CO2 and the hydrate crystallization kinetics. The effects of thermodynamic and
kinetic additives (and some additive combinations) on these two parameters for different
operating conditions (pressure, temperature, concentrations) were evaluated. Hydrate formation and dissociation experiments were performed in "batch mode" in a high pressure reactor, and with an experimental pilot rig designed and built entirely during this thesis. A semi-empirical model was also developed to estimate the water to hydrate conversion and the composition of the different phases (hydrates, liquid, and vapor) at equilibrium. The results show that the combination of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) used as a kinetic promoter, with tetrahydrofuran (THF) used as a thermodynamic promoter, provides interesting results in terms of both the amount of hydrates formed and the hydrate formation kinetics. The selectivity of the separation toward CO2 remains too low (an average of four CO2 molecules trapped in the hydrate structure for one of CH4) to consider using this "hydrate" process on a larger scale to separate CO2 from such a gas mixture.

Keywords: carbon dioxide capture and storage, gas hydrates, additives, promoters, natural gas
treatment