A kinetic model for the growth of natural gas hydrates based on chemical potential driving force

In recent decades, natural gas hydrate has emerged as a promising alternative energy resource, attracting worldwide attention in the petroleum and natural gas industry. Hydrate-based technologies have demonstrated considerable potential in various engineering applications, including natural gas exploitation, transportation, gas sequestration, and seawater desalination. However, the industrial application of these technologies is severely constrained by insufficient understanding of hydrate formation kinetics, especially in complex multiphase systems. This paper is built upon published experimental data and aims to characterize the driving force for hydrate growth by accounting for temperature and pressure. Accordingly, a kinetic model for hydrate growth driven by chemical potential is proposed. The model considers the influencing factors of diffusion, temperature, and hydrate surface area. The model’s accuracy is verified against experimental data, and the results indicate that it can effectively predict hydrate growth rates in both oil–water suspensions and gas–water systems with high reliability. When compared with experimental data, the hydrate growth rate in oil–water dispersed emulsion systems, the deviation of the present model is 2.7%–7.6%, while for gas–water systems, the model’s calculated deviation is 2.35%–2.89%. This work provides a valuable reference for interpreting hydrate growth mechanisms and offers technical support for the optimization of hydrate-based engineering applications in the petroleum and natural gas industry.