Density Functional Theory Based Investigation of 1-Butyl-3-Methylidazolium as a Potential Methane Hydrate Inhibitor

Abstract

Basically methane hydrate is solid crystal same as ice in which methane are trapped inside the cages of H-bonded water molecules. Low temperature and high pressure conditions are good for methane hydrates formation. Such type of condition prevails in gas or oil pipelines. The formation of these stable methane hydrates inside transmission pipelines and gas and oil production can lead to huge economic losses as blockage as well as rupture of pipeline may occur. Due to this problem the gas and oil industry triggers the research for preventing hydrates and its mitigation and this also benefits the recovery of methane from natural hydrates. Therefore in-order to minimize the loss we inhibits the growth of methane hydrate molecule by adding 1-butyl-3-methylidazolium which acts as potential inhibitor for methane hydrate molecule. In this paper we carried out few first principal based tests to show how 1-butyl-3-methylidazolium acts as inhibitor for methane hydrate (1CH4@512).