Nucleation Theory: A Literature Review and Applications to Nucleation Rates of Natural Gas Hydrates

Predicting the onset of hydrate nucleation in oil pipelines is one of the most challenging aspects in the flow assurance modelling work being performed at the Center for Hydrate Research. Nucleation is initiated by a random fluctuation which is able to overcome the energy barrier for the phase transition, once such a fluctuation occurs, further growth is energetically favourable. Historically the random fluctuation requires for nucleation was defined as the formation of a nucleus of critical size. Recently, more realistic models have been proposed based on density functional theory.