Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, Vol.60, No.6, 2677-2685, 2021
Effects of Hydrophobic and Hydrophilic Graphene Nanoflakes on Methane Dissolution Rates in Water under Vapor-Liquid-Hydrate Equilibrium Conditions
Several industries have steadily gained interest in gas hydrate technologies for their potential use in natural gas transport and storage applications. Additives which optimize the efficiencies of these technologies, particularly nanoparticles, have lately been subject to an increasing investigative focus. Graphene nanoflakes (GNFs) have previously been proven to enhance hydrate systems, particularly methane hydrate systems. In this study, the dissolution rates of methane and molar saturation values were measured in nanofluids containing both hydrophobic (as-produced) and hydrophilic (plasma-functionalized) GNFs at 2 degrees C and 3146 kPa. For both types of GNFs, the effect of loading in the aqueous phase was equally determined. Dissolution rate enhancement was limited at low concentrations of around 0.5 ppm for hydrophobic GNFs due to small-scale agglomeration while significantly increasing dissolution kinetics by about 18.84% at concentrations of 5 ppm. The performance eventually decreased at higher concentrations (10 ppm) due to large-scale agglomeration. Hydrophilic GNFs, which exhibited no agglomeration, enhanced dissolution rates further with each successive loading until a 44.45% plateau at 10 ppm. This plateau may have been a limit of the system or a result of mean free path limitations. Either type of GNFs nearly triples the dissolution rates of methane investigated in previous studies on multi-walled carbon nanotubes due to their higher specific surface area.