Design and Fabrication of Industrially Scalable low cost Liquid Impregnated Surfaces with extreme hydratephobic properties

TL;DR

This paper presents a scalable, low-cost method to create hydrate-phobic liquid impregnated surfaces on aluminium, significantly reducing hydrate adhesion through combined theoretical analysis and experimental validation.

Contribution

It introduces an industrially scalable fabrication process for hydrate-phobic LIS with a theoretical model predicting lubricant stability and experimental validation showing substantial hydrate adhesion reduction.

Findings

Hydrate adhesion reduced by over four orders of magnitude.

Fabrication method is simple, low-cost, and scalable.

Theoretical analysis successfully predicts lubricant stability.

Abstract

The design and fabrication of extremely hydrate phobic Liquid Impregnated Surfaces (sometimes abbreviated as LIS) based on industrial material Aluminium Al6061 and industrially scalable low-cost method were carried out. A simple hydrochloric acid-based etching method and boiling water treatment were used to generate micro and nanoscale nanopetal roughness features respectably. A theoretical analysis was performed to find out the relationship between the interfacial interactions and surface roughness features to predict the stability of lubricant oil of LIS under water and oil environment. LIS with appropriate surface chemistry and textures were fabricated to experimentally validate the theoretical analysis on lubricant stability. Subsequent experimental measurements of hydrate adhesion were performed on LIS with stable lubricant layers, using a custom-made experimental setup and cantilever-based method. Cyclopentane hydrate, mimics gas hydrate forming mechanism at atmospheric pressure, and is used for the hydrate adhesion measurements. Extreme reduction of hydrate adhesion with more than four orders of magnitude was observed on LIS compared to control smooth aluminium surfaces