Experimental Measurement and Thermodynamic Modeling for the Solubility of Methane in Water and Hexadecane

Abstract

In the petroleum industry, there is direct contact among oil, gases, and water in many steps of petroleum exploitation and refining operations. The main constituent of the natural gas is methane, presenting on its composition 95 % of this substance. To design and optimize these operations a correct characterization of the phase equilibrium is essential, which depends on accurate experimental data and thermodynamic models. So, the main goal of this work was the experimental measurement of methane solubility in water and hexadecane, since this organic compound has properties similar to the average properties of Brazilian heavy oil. The experimental conditions used were a temperature range from (303.2 to 323.2) K and a low pressure range from (60.8 to 638.5) kPa. Moreover, the results were correlated using the best thermodynamic model, the Peng−Robinson equation of state for both phases with original mixing rules, to describe the behavior of the systems, demonstrating satisfactory bubble-point calculation.