Gas hydrate formation has several applications in CO2 sequestration, flow assurance, and desalination. Nucleation of hydrates is constrained by very high induction (wait) times, which necessitates the use of complex nucleation promotion techniques to form hydrates. Presently, we report the discovery of a simple, passive nucleation promotion technique, wherein an aluminum surface significantly accelerates nucleation of CO2hydrates. Statistically meaningful measurements of induction times for CO2 hydrate nucleation were undertaken using water droplets as individual microsystems for hydrate formation. The influence of various metal surfaces, droplet size, CO2 dissolution time, and the presence of salts in water on nucleation kinetics was characterized. Interestingly, we observe nucleation initiation only on aluminum surfaces, the influence of which cannot be replicated by salts of aluminum. We discover that the aluminum-water interface is responsible for nucleation promotion. We hypothesize that hydrogen bubbles generated at the aluminum-water interface are responsible for nucleation promotion.

中文翻译：

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铝基促进二氧化碳水合物成核。

天然气水合物的形成在二氧化碳封存，流量保证和脱盐方面有多种应用。水合物的成核受到非常高的诱导（等待）时间的限制，这需要使用复杂的成核促进技术来形成水合物。目前，我们报告了一种简单的被动成核促进技术的发现，其中铝表面显着加速了CO2水合物的成核作用。使用水滴作为水合物形成的单个微系统，对CO2水合物成核的诱导时间进行了统计上有意义的测量。表征了各种金属表面，液滴尺寸，CO2溶解时间以及水中盐的存在对成核动力学的影响。有趣的是，我们仅在铝表面观察到成核起始，其影响不能被铝盐复制。我们发现铝-水界面负责成核促进。我们假设铝-水界面处产生的氢气泡是促进成核的原因。