Desalination 354 (2014) 17–22

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Desalination
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/desal

Enhanced efficiency of salt removal from brine for cyclopentane hydrates

by washing, centrifuging, and sweating
Songlee Han a, Ju-Young Shin b, Young-Woo Rhee a,⁎, Seong-Pil Kang c,⁎⁎
a
Department of Chemical Engineering, Chungnam National University, 99 Daehak-ro, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon 305-764, Republic of Korea
b
Department of Chemical Engineering, Hanyang University, 222 Wangsimni-ro, Seongdong-gu, Seoul 133-791, Republic of Korea
c
Climate Change Research Division, Korea Institute of Energy Research, Daejeon 305-343, Republic of Korea

H I G H L I G H T S G R A P H I C A L A B S T R A C T

• Cyclopentane hydrate formation in

3.5 wt.% NaCl aqueous solution was in-
vestigated.
• Hydration number and conversion of
water to hydrate were observed.
• Post-treatments of hydrate using wash-
ing, centrifuging, and sweating were
tested.
• It was proven that they were effective
and efficient ways to enhance salt re-
moval.

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: As a concept technology for water desalination, a hydrate-based process involving water-immiscible hydrate for-
Received 19 August 2014 mer was proposed and is under development [1,2]. In this study, we focused on successive secondary treatment
Received in revised form 19 September 2014 methods to improve the salt removal efficiency when the hydrate-based process was applied for water desalina-
Accepted 21 September 2014
tion. At first, hydrate formation reactions were carried out at atmospheric pressure and either 1.0 or 4.0 °C, with
Available online 3 October 2014
simulated brine of 3.5 wt.% NaCl and various centration of cyclopentane (from 1.0 to 5.0 mol%). Results showed
Keywords:
that substantial conversion of water to hydrate was possible as the degree of subcooling became high. A water
Gas hydrate mixture with 3.0 mol% cyclopentane at 4.0 °C, was subjected to centrifuging, washing, or sweating to achieve
Cyclopentane additional salt removal. Centrifuging produced the best salt removal efficiency (average 96%). Washing with a
Hydrate formation suitable amount of freshwater could effectively improve salt removal (to 93%). Sweating for an appropriate
Centrifuging amount of time could also reduce the salt attached to the crystal surface more than 95%, but in this case the
Washing amount of water produced was proportionally diminished. According to the result, optimized washing method
Sweating can be a promising candidate to raise the efficiency of the hydrate-based desalination process.
© 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +82 42 821 5686; fax: +82 42 822 8995.
⁎⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.:+82 42 860 3475; fax: +82 42 860 3097. Gas hydrates are solid crystalline compounds formed when water
E-mail addresses: ywrhee@cnu.ac.kr (Y.-W. Rhee), spkang@kier.re.kr (S.-P. Kang). molecules are connected by hydrogen bonds to form three-dimensional

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2014.09.023
0011-9164/© 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
18 S. Han et al. / Desalination 354 (2014) 17–22
structures under specific temperature and pressure condition: gener-
ally low temperature and high pressure, and the water structures are
able to enclose low-molecular-weight guest species [3]. Gas hydrates
are considered as a nuisance in the oil and gas industries, because
produced fluids contain water, and they are frequently exposed to
conditions favoring hydrate formation with light gaseous mixture
[4]. This leads to blockage problems in production equipment, espe-
cially pipelines, and can become a serious operational issue. Such hy-
drates are being investigated in order to use them for applications
such as energy storage [5,6], CO2 capture [7] and transport [8], frozen
food [9], refrigerant and cold thermal energy [10], and alternative
natural gas transport [11].
An attractive potential application for gas hydrates is water desalina-
tion. When hydrate crystals form, they consist of distinct water and
guest species, so that we can obtain clean water after dissociating the
hydrate particles recovered. Based on this possibility, water desalination
using hydrates has been investigated during last decade [12,13] and is
still being developed at laboratory scale [2]. Gas-hydrate technology
for water desalination is theoretically feasible and attractive, but still
requires breakthroughs to increase the efficiency of salt removal, and
to decrease the cost. Compared to thermal distillation, the freezing (or
hydrate) method requires quite low energy consumption, because the
heat of vaporization of water is 40.7 kJ/mol, heat of freezing of water
is 6.02 kJ/mol, and heat of hydrate formation is only 4.84 kJ/mol (for
cyclopentane hydrate [14]). However, a serious challenge to the success
of the freezing and hydrate method is the removal of salt attached to the
surface of the recovered crystals. Salt is dissolved in water trapped in-
side the cleavages between crystals, and this salt is the sticking point
to commercialization. Therefore, it would appear that the goal of desali-
nation using crystal formation should be changed. It seems that, based
on the current technology, the desalination process for obtaining drink-
ing water using gas hydrate and freezing method is inadequate: howev-
er, water adequate for industrial use can be recovered from brackish
or polluted water. Based on its energy efficiency, it appears that the
gas hydrate method could become a competitive process. Cha and
Seol [2] aimed to use hydrate technology to recover usable water from
wastewater produced in shale-gas fields.
Gas hydrate formation requires water and a hydrate former. In the
case of gas species as a hydrate former, hydrate formation requires
greatly increased pressure so that the additional equipment and operat-
ing costs are needed to achieve it. Researchers have tried to find ways to
decrease the hydrate-formation pressure and have reported that CO2
[12,15], R141b [16] and R22 [17] could be promising candidates for
hydrate formation at relatively low pressures. Corak et al. [1] used
cyclopentane as a hydrate former because it forms solid hydrate crystals
at atmospheric pressure. Cyclopentane exists as a separate liquid phase
in water under normal conditions and shows extremely low solubility
in water. Thus, it can be recovered simply by decanting after the hydrate
crystals are collected and dissociated. They investigated the effect of the
degree of subcooling, and of the ratio of cyclopentane to water, on the
formation rate. They reported that operation variables are mostly de-
pendent on the degree of subcooling, and a high degree of subcooling
seems to produce rapid hydrate formation rate, as well as higher degree
of desalination overall.
In this study, we investigated the hydrate-formation process
using cyclopentane as a hydrate former, and took the unincorporated
cyclopentane into account in the calculations. In addition, we examined
the effectiveness of supplementary steps after vacuum filtering to in-
crease the efficiency of salt removal. We washed hydrate crystals with
a small amount of fresh water, centrifuged filtered hydrate crystals in
order to remove salt trapped in cleavages, and provided sweating time
by which hydrate crystals might decrease the salt on the crystal surface.
Simple and effective post-processing improved the competitiveness of
the hydrate method for desalination. The purity of the water produced
and the increased efficiency of salt removal for each step were inten-
sively studied.
2. Experiment
2.1. Materials
Distilled water was purchased from Merck (HPLC grade), and was
further treated using a water deionization system (Thermo Scientific
GenPure™). Cyclopentane (98% purity) was purchased from Sigma-
Aldrich and used without further treatment. Brine solution was
prepared by adding 3.5 wt.% of NaCl (Duksan Chemical, 99.0% purity)
to de-ionized water.
2.2. Apparatus
A glass crystallizer with a thermocouple was constructed to
form cyclopentane hydrate. A round-bottomed two-necked flask
(750 ml) containing a magnetic spin bar (40 × 8 mm) was placed in a
temperature-controlled cooling bath. The thermocouple was inserted
into the solution to measure the temperature throughout the experi-
ment. Each neck of flask was sealed by a silicon lid in order to prevent
the coolant from soaking into the crystallizer. To obtain a stable temper-
ature for hydrate formation, the coolant (mixture of 30 vol.% ethylene
glycol and 70 vol.% of water) was circulated by chiller (Jeio-Tech,
R3040). RPM of magnetic spin bar was controlled using an external im-
mersion stirrer (Sonics, MC303).
A vacuum filter assay device (Wheaton) connected to a vacuum
pump (Vacuubrand, ME 8) was used to filter the hydrate slurry. While
filtering the hydrate slurry, OMNIPORE membrane filters (10.0 μl JC,
Millipore) were applied to the filter assay device in order to separate
the hydrates from the remaining liquid. In addition, a vacuum oven
(Jeio-Tech, OV 12) was utilized to separate cyclopentane from water
when the hydrates were dissociated. Excess water in the hydrate parti-
cles was also removed using a cooled centrifuge (Hettich Lab Technolo-
gy, Universal 320R).
The purity of water was determined by measuring the conductivity
of the aqueous solution, using a SevenCompact™ conductivity meter
(Mettler Toledo).
2.3. Experimental procedure
Equilibrium dissociation temperatures for cyclopentane hydrate at
1 bar have been reported, but the reported temperatures were all differ-
ent (7.7 °C [18], 6.8 °C [19], 7.11 °C [20]). In addition, there was no
available equilibrium dissociation temperature for brine (3.5 wt.%).
Corak et al. [1] determined a dissociation temperature of 6.8 °C for
3.0 wt.% NaCl solution, and Zylyftari et al., 5.28 °C for 3.4 wt.% NaCl
solution [20]. Therefore, we measured the equilibrium dissociation
temperature of cyclopentane hydrate in pure water and in 3.5 wt.%
NaCl brine, to confirm the validity of our experimental procedure and
to determine the exact subcooling to use. According to our measure-
ment, we selected the equilibrium temperatures of 7.8 °C for pure
water, and 6.6 °C for 3.5 wt.% NaCl brine.
First, the cyclopentane and brine (3.5 wt.% NaCl) were introduced
into a crystallizer and well mixed using a magnetic spin bar at
700 RMP. Then, the mixed fluid was cooled down to a specific experi-
mental temperature. To induce the formation of cyclopentane hydrate,
the temperature was maintained at 1 and 4 °C, at which temperatures
the subcooling was 5.6 K and 2.6 K, respectively.
Hydrate formation is a stochastic process and its appearance is
thus rather irregular. For this reason, we tried to make the process
more reproducible by adding a few small ice particles to the crystallizer
at the experimental temperature, which commenced hydrate formation
easily. The temperatures of the liquid mixtures, and the time, were
continuously recorded throughout the experiment. After particles
of cyclopentane hydrate appeared, the crystallizer was left as it was
while maintaining the temperature to allow the particles to grow
enough. When the temperature of the mixture became stable again,
 S. Han et al. / Desalination 354 (2014) 17–22
the crystallizer was filled with hydrate slurry for further treatment. The
content of the crystallizer was then filtered with suction in order to sep-
arate the hydrate from the remaining liquid consisting of un-hydrated
brine and cyclopentane. The filtered hydrate was then further subjected
to washing, centrifuging, and sweating.
A portion of the vacuum-filtered hydrate crystals was immersed in a
specific amount of distilled water to wash for a while. It was expected
that this washing step could remove NaCl if it were attached to the hy-
drate surface. The washed hydrate was then vacuum filtered once again
to remove the remaining salty water from crystal surfaces or from
hydrate pores as much as possible. At the same time, some portion of
the hydrate slurry obtained from the crystallizer was vacuum filtered,
and then treated using a centrifuge at 8000 RMP cooled to − 5 °C for
3 min. A cotton plug was placed in the bottom of each conical tube to ab-
sorb residual water, and the remaining solid hydrate was then collected
and weighed to determine its quantity. Another portion of the hydrate
slurry was prepared for further treatment by sweating. This portion of
the hydrate slurry was vacuum filtered; then the hydrate crystals col-
lected were placed into a new flask immersed in a water bath, con-
trolled by a thermostat. The temperature was set to 9 °C, slightly
above the equilibrium dissociation temperature, and the duration for
sweating was set to 1, 2, 4, and 8 min, so as to investigate the effect of
sweating time. In this way, the surface of the hydrate particles was par-
tially melted, and more of the NaCl possibly attached there was re-
moved. This was an attempt to enhance the purity of the water
derived from the dissociated hydrate.
When un-hydrated or retrieved water and cyclopentane were ob-
tained at every step, we determined the entire quantity of water and
cyclopentane. To achieve this, the cyclopentane remaining in the
water had to be removed. Water contaminated with cyclopentane was
removed through evaporation using an oven. Its temperature was
set to 50 °C, and each sample was left in the oven for 2 h. The purity
of water from dissociated hydrate was determined by measuring its
electrical conductivity, assuming that NaCl ions can only exist in the
liquid water phase and wholly contribute to the conductivity. The elec-
trical conductivity of cyclopentane was neglected because of its ex-
tremely low value. Measuring and calculating the masses of water,
cyclopentane, and NaCl, we determined the efficiency of salt removal
and found the effect of each treatment step. Fig. 1 is provided to clarify
the process of salt removal used in this study.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Selection of experimental conditions
As mentioned above, we determined the equilibrium dissociation
temperature of cyclopentane hydrate at atmospheric pressure and
chose to use 6.6 °C for 3.5 wt.% NaCl aqueous solution. Based on this
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of salt removal experiments using hydrate-based method with different post-treatment steps.
19
temperature we also decided to use the experimental temperatures
1 and 4 °C, which provided subcooling of 5.6 and 2.6 K, respectively.
By means of these two temperature conditions, we could compare the
effect of subcooling on hydrate formation. We also selected the mole
concentration of cyclopentane relative to the total moles of the water-
and-cyclopentane mixture. Corak et al. [1] set limits of cyclopentane
(mol%) to aqueous solution from 0.9 to 2.3, because higher or lower
conversion beyond this range showed either complete solid hydrate,
or amounts too small to collect, respectively. In this study, however,
we expanded the range of cyclopentane test concentrations to 1,
3 and 5 mol% cyclopentane. We considered that some amount of
cyclopentane does not form hydrate, thus a somewhat higher concen-
tration of cyclopentane was applied. Theoretical conversion of water
to hydrate was expected to be 17.17, 52.58, and 89.47 wt.% for 1, 3,
and 5 mol% cyclopentane, respectively, but these values were higher
than those determined in experiments.
3.2. Hydration number
The hydration number, nH, is defined as the number of water mole-
cules in the hydrate crystals divided by the number of hydrate former
molecules. In this study, we used cyclopentane as the hydrate former.
It is known that cyclopentane forms structure II hydrate and only oc-
cupies the large cavities of the unit structure II [3]. Structure II hydrate
consists of 16 small cavities, 8 large cavities, and 136 water molecules,
so that cyclopentane occupies only 8 cavities in a unit structure. Assum-
ing all cyclopentane is converted into hydrate, the theoretical hydration
number becomes 17. However, the hydration numbers calculated from
the experimental results were different from the theoretical ones. When
determining the masses of water and cyclopentane in the filtered
hydrate, the calculated hydration numbers were obtained as the ratio
of water to cyclopentane in the hydrate produced. Fig. 2 shows the hy-
dration numbers calculated from each measurement, for different
subcooling and cyclopentane concentration conditions. The calculated
hydration numbers obtained were 16.0 and 19.6 for subcooling of
5.6 K and 2.6 K, respectively. These deviated 5.88% and 15.3% from the
theoretical values. For subcooling of 5.6 K, the calculated hydration
number was nearly the same as the theoretical value, but half of the
test runs resulted in lower hydration numbers. This means that more
cyclopentane molecules are associated with the hydrate structure
than indicated by the theoretical number, and this is quite an incompre-
hensible condition. This deviation is relatively smaller than the range
(7–14) reported by Corak et al. [1], and may be due to cyclopentane
encapsulated in hydrate crystals as un-hydrated. The removal of
salt and liquid by vacuum filtering was not complete and physically en-
capsulated cyclopentane still remained to some extent. On the other
hand, the value of 19.6 in the case of 2.6 K subcooling makes sense:
less cyclopentane was incorporated within the hydrate structure than
20 S. Han et al. / Desalination 354 (2014) 17–22
Fig. 2. Calculated hydration numbers for different levels of subcooling and for different
cyclopentane concentrations.
indicated by the theoretical value, as expected. When greater subcooling
was applied, the conversion of water and cyclopentane to hydrate (and
vice versa) was also high. Cyclopentane droplets form in the continuous
water phase when the mixture is stirred, and the hydrate particles pri-
marily form at the interface. A hydrate shell grows around a droplet
and a rate-limiting step is the mass diffusion of cyclopentane through
the shell to the interface of the two phases. Therefore, there is more
rapid hydrate formation with greater subcooling, and this traps more
cyclopentane inside the hydrate layer, and results in a hydration number
below the theoretical value.
3.3. Conversion of water to hydrate
Based on the measurement of hydrated/remaining amounts of water
and cyclopentane, we calculated the conversion of water to hydrate.
Obviously, there was uncertainty in the calculation procedure, because
some amount of water also evaporated with the cyclopentane, while
quantifying the liquid–liquid mixture by evaporation. However, the
results provide confidence in the experimental procedure, because the
hydration number determined is within a reasonable range. The calcu-
lated conversion of water to hydrate, according to the added ratio of
cyclopentane, is presented in Fig. 3. As can be seen, the conversion
of water to hydrate increased as the concentration of cyclopentane
Fig. 3. Conversion of water to hydrate with subcooling of 5.6 K and 2.6 K.
increased. In addition, the conversion was also affected by the degree
of subcooling. In the case of 5.6 K subcooling, higher conversion was
obtained than in the case of 2.6 K subcooling, but the difference in
conversion was not remarkable at the addition of 1 mol% cyclopentane.
Compared to the theoretical value of water conversion to cyclopentane
hydrate, the experimental conversion at 3 mol% cyclopentane was low,
and it did not exceed 50% of theoretical, even with subcooling of 5.6 K.
The high level of conversion at 5 mol% caused formation of an almost
solid-like slurry, and the low level of conversion at 1 mol% was too
poor to collect an amount of hydrate crystals suitable for experimenta-
tion. It is natural that high subcooling results in high conversion, but the
increase of enclathrated or adsorbed salt on the surface of hydrate
crystals is unavoidable. Moreover, the difference in the conversion be-
tween the two subcooling conditions was not so high. To follow-up
with a focused study of the effect of post-treatment on NaCl removal,
we restricted the next stage of experiments to the conditions of
3 mol% cyclopentane and 2.6 K subcooling.
3.4. Desalination
At the above mentioned temperature and cyclopentane to water
ratio, experiments on desalination using hydrate formation were con-
ducted and the results of NaCl removal were illustrated in Fig. 4. Mea-
suring the concentration of NaCl in water, and determining the masses
of water and cyclopentane, made it possible to obtain the quantity of
NaCl in the water derived from dissociation of hydrate crystals. Fig. 4
shows how much NaCl was removed, compared to the 3.5 wt.% feed
aqueous solution. At subcooling of 2.6 K (4 °C) and with 3 mol%
cyclopentane, about 60% of the NaCl from the feed solution was re-
moved after hydrate formation and vacuum filtering (results varied
from 49% to 72%). This means that the dissociated water was still
about 0.9–1.4 wt.% NaCl. This level of water purification is clearly inad-
equate for desalination, so we tried to further treatments of the
vacuum-filtered hydrate crystals to improve purification efficiency.
To compare the results of this work to that in the literature [1], the
next step applied was centrifuging. Most of the remaining NaCl was
removed by centrifuging, and the efficiency of salt removal averaged
96%. The efficiency varied from 94% to 98%, and this result was the
best among all the treatment methods in this work. The salinity of the
water obtained was about 0.25%. Centrifuging is a useful and efficient
process by which to remove the remaining water in hydrate crystals
where salt is readily dissolved, so the salinity can be decreased
with this treatment. However, this method is too expensive to be suit-
able for mass treatment. Therefore, we substituted other reasonable
methods, and next tried washing the salt off the crystals. When 4%
Fig. 4. Effect of different treatments on salt removal by cyclopentane hydrate formation.
 S. Han et al. / Desalination 354 (2014) 17–22
Fig. 5. Effect of amount of fresh water on salt removal by cyclopentane hydrate formation.
freshwater to feed water was applied to vacuum-filtered hydrate
crystals, about 88% of the remaining NaCl was removed. This washing
step effectively cleaned the salt from the surface of hydrate crystals.
The last post-treatment tested was sweating. Vacuum-filtered
hydrate crystals were collected and left in the chamber at 9 °C, above
the dissociation temperature of cyclopentane hydrate, for 4 min.
This test showed about 70% salt removal, and the overall salt-removal
efficiency was increased only 10% by the sweating process. The sweating
Fig. 6. (a) Effect of sweating time on salt removal by cyclopentane hydrate formation, (b) ratio of salt removal to hydrate loss over time when sweating was applied.
21
treatment was the simplest among the methods tried in this work, but re-
sulted in the lowest salt-removal efficiency.
The efficiency of the washing and sweating methods are dependent
on other variables such as the amount of water applied and the time
allowed for sweating. To find the effect of such variables, we performed
experiments and the results of which are shown in Figs. 5 and 6. Fig. 5
shows the effect of the amount of fresh water applied for washing,
and Fig. 6 shows the dependence of salt removal on sweating time.
We changed the ratio of washing water to produced water from 2% to
5%, and results showed that there was a maximum point beyond
which increases in the amount of fresh water applied would likely not
improve salt-removal efficiency. Thus, to maximize the washing effect
of hydrate crystals for desalination, an optimal amount of fresh water
should be introduced. It is generally accepted that the amount of wash
water should be no more than a few percent of the total freshwater pro-
duced [21]. This study presents the results of primary tests. The efficien-
cy of salt removal by washing could be increased by using more efficient
mechanical devices, such as packed-iced beds for counter-washing [22,
23].
Finally, we observed the effect of sweating time on salt removal. As
can be seen in Fig. 6a, the efficiency of salt removal increased over
time up to 97%. This process is time-dependent, and the amount of
water produced decreases as time goes by. The rate of hydrate melting
is also dependent on the sweating temperature, but the result in Fig. 6
is based on a fixed temperature (9 °C). Here, we took the loss of hydrate
by sweating into account. As the efficiency of salt removal increased
over time, the loss of hydrate also increased so there was a trade-off.
To find out the relative effectiveness of sweating, we prepared a new
22 S. Han et al. / Desalination 354 (2014) 17–22
ratio: removed NaCl to hydrate loss. This value should be above 1.0,
which means that the salt removal method is effective, compared to
the loss of hydrate (produced water). The results are shown in Fig. 6b.
In the test runs, more than 4 min of sweating achieved the desired
values of the ratio, but by then, the hydrate loss was about 14%. There-
fore, a way of diminishing hydrate loss during sweating is now needed.
The melting of hydrate crystal is related to its shape, particle size distri-
bution, and atmospheric temperature, among other characteristics. The
effects of such characteristics on desalination efficiency will be investi-
gated in future work.
The purity of the water produced by a hydrate-based process is
strongly related to the existence of excess water in the crystals, and to
the presence of salt adsorbed to crystal surfaces. Removal of salt from
the crystals can be increased by adopting a highly efficient filter system,
an optimized crystallizer (mixing solution for effective mass and heat
transfer) and optimized operation variables. Therefore, desalination by
hydrate formation remains attractive because it still has options for
refinement in the future. In this work we presented estimates of desali-
nation efficiency according to the treatment steps, and in relation to
some variables (sweating time and amount of wash water). These re-
sults showed relatively large deviations from the averages, mainly due
to the stochastic nature of hydrate formation, as well as to experimental
error during measurements; however, the averaged values showed
trends with an acceptable tolerance.
4. Conclusion
Cyclopentane hydrate formation in 3.5 wt.% NaCl aqueous solution
(brine) was investigated at 1.0 and 4.0 °C and atmospheric pressure.
These combinations corresponded to subcooling of 5.6 and 2.6 K, re-
spectively. Hydration number and conversion of water to hydrate with
the variation of cyclopentane concentration were observed. The change
in salinity of the feed water, and of the water recovered from dissociated
hydrate crystals, was determined, as were the quantities of un-hydrated
water and cyclopentane. The hydration number of cyclopentane
hydrate was close to the theoretical value with 5.6 K subcooling and
higher than the theoretical value with 2.6 K subcooling. The conversions
of water to hydrate were higher with 5.6 K subcooling than with 2.6 K
subcooling, but the difference was not large. To improve the overall salt-
removal efficiency of this method, post-treatments (i.e., centrifuging,
washing, and sweating) were tried on 3 mol% cyclopentane with 2.6 K
subcooling. Centrifuging showed the highest salt-removal efficiency
among the methods tested. A small amount of wash water effectively re-
moved salt attached to hydrate crystals. When an efficacious mechanical
means such as counter washer or scraping device is used together with
the washing method, its efficiency is likely to be maximized. Sweating
over time not only increased the salt removal efficiency, but also dimin-
ished the amount of water retrieved. Consequently, an optimal time
should be allowed for the sweating of hydrate crystals. Results show
that centrifuging is the best way but it seems quite difficult to treat the
massive feed water and is an expensive method, and washing can be a
promising candidate for increasing salt removal efficiency with a relative-
ly little effort. Although it has been proven that these post-treatments of
cyclopentane hydrate crystals, especially washing, are effective and effi-
cient steps to enhance salt removal, more detailed studies on the effect
of process parameters, and on the characteristics of hydrate formation,
are required for future development of a complete desalination process.
Acknowledgment
This work was supported by the Energy Efficiency & Resources
Program of the Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation
and Planning (KETEP) grant funded by the Ministry of Trade, Industry
and Energy, Republic of Korea (No. 2013251010005C).
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