As tabulated in Table 8, the calcul

As tabulated in Table 8, the calculated hydrate effective volumefraction decreases with the increasing wax content at various water cuts.This suggests that the presence of wax crystals inhibits the hydrategrowth in waxy w/o emulsions, however, wax crystals can improve themechanical strength of hydrate slurry from the perspective of yieldstress. The capillary force between the formed hydrate particles plays animportant role in the yield stress of hydrate slurry. Necessary stress isneeded to destroy the liquid capillary bridge between the formed hydrate particles, after which hydrate slurry can again obtain the flowability during the shut-in and restart process. For the water cut rangeused in this work, more water is available to form the capillary bridgebetween hydrate particles as the water cut increases, which causes theincrease in the measured yield stress whether the wax crystals are present or not, as shown in Fig. 12. Besides, the wax crystals tend to precipitate and aggregate to each other in waxy w/o emulsions when thesystem temperature is less than the wax appearance temperature (WAT)[66,69]. Wax crystals precipitated in the continuous phase to form thespatial network during the annealing time, and the formed CP hydrateslurry ought to be wrapped in the spatial network. As a result, thestrength of the spatial network is stronger when the wax content ishigher in waxy w/o emulsions. Moreover, additional force is needed toovercome the water droplet deformation in w/o emulsions. Herein, theyield stress of hydrate slurry formed in waxy w/o emulsions can bedivided into two parts as shown in Eq. (18). It is worth noting that thecalculated yield stress (σp/w) includes the forces acquired to destroy the spatial network of wax crystals and to overcome the water droplet deformation in waxy w/o emulsions.