providing the anti foaming agent the catalytic effect can be extended to much larger vessels despite the presence of anti foaming agent and despite the scale up effects referenced above we added 100 500 ppm doses of commercially available anti foaming agent for example dow corning antifoam 1920 we found that it acted as neither an inhibitor nor a co catalyst it reduced the impact of foam formation during formation and dissociation of the hydrate the short lived foam produced during formation has been eliminated in our experiments and the long lived fine foam produced during dissociation breaks rapidly this allows for the high rate of reaction made available by the catalysts to be applied to a complete industrial process we also measured the effect of subcooling a measure of the driving force of crystallization on reaction rate of hydrocarbons from a mixed gas phase being consumed into gas hydrate fig4 we found that by driving the temperatures lower than the stability temperature at a given pressure and gas composition some driving force acceleration of the hydrate forming reaction could be gained we found that with increasing subcooling the rate of reaction increases but that the degree of gas separation decreases as the less preferred formers 39 rates increase faster than the more preferred formers 39 rates we believe that this relationship has not been recorded in the literature or presented publically prior to this disclosure therefore we conclude that for optimal gas separation based on degree of hydrate forming preference of each gas in this invention conditions in the hydrate.