Gas hydrate (GH)-based desalination process have a potential as a novel unit desalination process. GHs are nonstoichiometric crystalline inclusion compounds formed at low temperature and a high pressure condition by water and a number of guest gas molecules. After formation, pure GHs are separated from the remaining concentrated seawater and they are dissociated into guest gas and pure water in a low temperature and a high pressure condition. The condition of GH formation is different depending on the type of guest gas. This is the reason why the guest gas is a key to success of GH desalination process. The salt rejection of GH based desalination process appeared 60.5-93%, post treatment process is needed to finally meet the product water quality. This study adopted reverse osmosis (RO) as a post treatment. However, the test about gas rejection by RO process have to be performed because the guest gas will be dissolved in a GH product (RO feed). In this research, removal potential of dissolved gas by RO process is performed using lab-scale RO system and GC/MS analysis. The relation between RO membrane characteristics and gas removal rate were analyzed based on the GC/MS measurement.

Gas hydrate desalination process is based on a liquid to solid (Gas Hydrate, GH) phase change followed by a physical process to separate the GH from the remaining salty water. The GH based desalination process show 60.5-90% of salt rejection, post treatment like reverse osmosis (RO) process is needed to finally meet the product water quality. In this study, the energy consumption of the GH and RO hybrid system was investigated. The energy consumption of the GH process is based on the cooling and heating of seawater and the heat of GH formation reaction while RO energy consumption is calculated using the product of pressure and flow rate of high pressure pumps used in the process. The relation between minimum energy consumption of RO process and RO recovery depending on GH salt rejection, and (2) energy consumption of electric based GH process can be calculated from the simulation. As a result, energy consumption of GH-RO hybrid system and conventional seawater RO process (with/without enregy recovery device) is compared. Since the energy consumption of GH process is too high, other solution used seawater heat and heat exchanger instead of electric energy is suggested.

Gas hydrates are crystalline solids in which gas molecules (guests) are trapped in water cavities (hosts) that are composed of hydrogen-bonded water molecules. During the formation of gas hydrates in seawater, the equilibria and kinetics are then affected by salinity. In this study, the effects of salinity on the equilibria of CO2 and R134-a gas hydrates has been investigated by tracing the changes of operating temperature and pressure. Increasing the salinity by 1.75% led to a drop in the equilibrium temperature of about 2 oC for CO2 gas hydrate and 0.38 oC for R-134a gas hydrate at constant equilibrium pressure; in other words, there were rises in the equilibrium pressure of about 1 bar and 0.25 bar at constant equilibrium temperature, respectively. The kinetics of gas hydrate formation have also been investigated by time-resolved in-situ Raman spectroscopy; the results demonstrate that the increase of salinity delayed the formation of both CO2 and R134-a gas hydrates. Therefore, various ions in seawater can play roles of inhibitors for gas hydrate formation in terms of both equilibrium and kinetics.

The emission of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels has been identified as a major contributor to green house emissions and subsequent global warming and climate changes. For these reasons, it is necessary to separate and recover CO2 gas. A new process based on gas hydrate crystallization is proposed for the CO2 separation/recovery of the gas mixture. In this study, gas hydrate from CO2/H2 gas mixtures was formed in a semi-batch stirred vessel at a constant pressure and temperature. This mixture is of interest to CO2 separation and recovery in Integrated Coal Gasification (IGCC) plants. The impact of tetrahydrofuran (THF) on hydrate formation from the CO2/H2 was observed. The addition of THF not only reduced the equilibrium formation conditions significantly but also helped ease the formation of hydrates. This study illustrates the concept and provides the basic operations of the separation/recovery of CO2 (pre-combustion capture) from a fuel gas (CO2/H2) mixture.

[ SF6 ] gas has been widely used as an insulating, cleaning and covering gas due to its outstanding insulating feature and because of its inert properties. However, the global warming potential of SF6 gas is extremely high relative to typical global warming gases such as CO2, CFCs, and CH4. For these reasons, it is necessary to separate and collect waste SF6 gas. In this study, the effects of a surfactant (Tween) on the formation rate of SF6 gas hydrates were investigated. The SF6 gas hydrate formation rate increased with the addition of Tween and showed a nearly 6.5 times faster hydrate formation rate with an addition of 0.2 wt.% Tween compared to an addition of pure water. This is believed to be due to the increased solubility of SF6 gas with the addition of the surfactant. It was also found that SF6 gas hydrate in the surfactant solution showed two-stage hydrate formation rates with a formation rate that increased rapidly in the 2nd stage.