Síntese de inibidores de hidratos de gás e suas aplicações em unidade de exploração de petróleo e gás para uso em águas profundas

Abstract

The formation of hydrates, whether in the production or transportation pipelines or in the equipment of a natural gas processing plant, determines the general shutdown of the system, causing large losses of revenue, loss of profit, time (h) and increase of operational risk. Avoiding the formation of gas hydrates in these systems is of fundamental importance for the effective use of natural gas and oil produced in the fields of production. In this context, this research has as main objective, to synthesize compounds with chemical characteristics for inhibitors of formation of gas hydrates with use in deep waters. The work proposes the use of synthetic methodologies, which were adapted and optimized, to obtain organic salts with different lengths of alkyl chains from different amino acids, in order to evaluate the effect of inhibition of CO2 HG of these compounds. From the structural elucidation (analysis of 13C and 1H by NMR and elemental analysis of C, H and N) the desired compounds were proved to be obtained. CO2 hydrates were synthesized in pure water in a reactor under agitation under isochronous conditions, to be used as a parameter for the inhibition tests. The synthesized organic salts were tested in the HG production unit under the same conditions used for the pure water experiments. In general, hydrophilic compounds exhibit thermodynamic inhibition effects for the tested condition, while hydrophobic compounds exhibit kinetic inhibitor behavior. However, the objective of the study was to synthesize 42 compounds, being 21 esters and 21 organic salts, from different amino acids and alkyl chains, 8 of which are unprecedented. At the same time, all the synthesized compounds do not have application in the literature for the inhibition of HG.