Pore‐Scale Determination of Gas Relative Permeability in Hydrate‐Bearing Sediments Using X‐Ray Computed Micro‐Tomography and Lattice Boltzmann Method

Chen, Xiongyu; Verma, Rahul; Espinoza, D. Nicolas; Prodanović, Maša

doi:10.1002/2017wr021851

Cited by 121 publications

(66 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…The bulk porosity of A‐graded and B‐graded host sands is controlled between 37% and 38%, and the initial water saturation is about 0.5. For reference, various kinds of solutions used as alternatives to pure water can keep enhancing the phase contrast between hydrate and solution in X‐ray CT images during hydrate formation due to the increasing solute concentration (Chen et al, ; Kerkar et al, ; Lei et al, ; Li et al, ; Ta et al, ).…”

Section: Theory and Experimental Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pore Fractal Characteristics of Hydrate‐Bearing Sands and Implications to the Saturated Water Permeability

Zhang

Ning

et al. 2020

JGR Solid Earth

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Permeability mainly governs fluid flow through hydrate‐bearing sediments, and its theoretical models play a primary role in the efficiency prediction of gas recovery from hydrate reservoirs by using numerical simulators. Most of these numerical simulators rely on empirical or semiempirical permeability models largely due to the lack of suitable parameters that well quantify the evolution of pore structures. In this study, X‐ray computed tomography scans are conducted on methane hydrate‐bearing sands, followed by extractions of the maximal diameter and fractal dimensions for the pore space occupied by fluids. These extracted parameters, including area and volume pore‐size fractal dimensions, tortuosity fractal dimension, and the area maximal pore diameter, are further extended to develop fractal theory‐based models for predictions of the hydraulic tortuosity and the saturated water permeability in hydrate‐bearing sands. Results show that the pore space occupied by fluids within hydrate‐bearing sands is inherently fractal. The area pore‐size fractal dimension decreases but the tortuosity fractal dimension changes little with increasing hydrate saturation, and the sum of these two fractal dimensions can be used to predict the volume pore‐size fractal dimension. In addition, the area maximal pore diameter decreases with increasing hydrate saturation, and a semiempirical model is proposed. The fractal theory‐based permeability reduction model agrees well with available experimental data, and it can capture the essential physics of saturated water permeability reduction in hydrate‐bearing sediments during hydrate formation.

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Section: Theory and Experimental Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pore Fractal Characteristics of Hydrate‐Bearing Sands and Implications to the Saturated Water Permeability

Zhang

Ning

et al. 2020

JGR Solid Earth

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“…In recent years, the dynamic characteristics of permeability in hydrate-bearing sediments have been investigated extensively by different approaches, including theoretical (Delli & Grozic, 2013;Katagiri et al, 2017), experimental (Delli & Grozic, 2014;Kleinberg et al, 2003;Kleinberg & Griffin, 2005;Kumar et al, 2010;Ordonez et al, 2009), numerical (Dai & Seol, 2014;Hou et al, 2018;Kang et al, 2016), and a combination of these approaches (Chen, Verma et al, 2018) under different simplifying assumptions. Permeability is a critical parameter dominating fluid flow, heat transfer, and mass transport in hydrate-bearing sediments.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They studied the capillary effect on permeability. Chen, Verma, et al (2018) combined X-ray computed microtomography and the LB method to study the effect of pore habit on the relation of normalized permeability and hydrate saturation in hydrate-bearing sediments and also proposed a permeability variation model. Hou et al (2018) investigated fluid flow in hydratebearing sediments using the LB method and proposed permeability variation models for pore-filling and grain-coating hydrates.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pore‐Scale Investigation of Methane Hydrate Dissociation Using the Lattice Boltzmann Method

Zhang

et al. 2019

Water Resources Research

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Fundamental understanding of pore‐scale methane hydrate dissociation in porous media is important to evaluate submarine slope stability and potential utilization of methane resources. In this paper, a general pore‐scale framework based on the lattice Boltzmann (LB) method is established for reactive transport coupled with nonisothermal multiple physicochemical processes in porous media. The framework combines the gas hydrate dissociation kinetic model, the single‐phase flow LB model, the mass transport LB model, and the conjugate heat transfer LB model. The pore‐scale framework is validated by several benchmark problems and then employed to investigate the endothermic dissociation process of methane hydrate with pore‐filling and grain‐coating habits in porous media. The methane hydrate endothermic dissociation behavior coupled with nonlinear nonisothermal multiple physicochemical processes involving intrinsic dissociation dynamics, gas flow, mass transport, phase change heat transfer, and conjugate heat transfer is well captured by the framework. The phase change of methane hydrate dissociation and pore structure evolution for different pore habits of hydrate are well depicted, and some insights about the dissociation front advancement and temperature distributions are also obtained. In addition, the effects of temperature field, inlet temperature, and inlet pressure on methane hydrate dissociation are investigated. The pore‐scale methane hydrate dissociation helps to advance our understanding of permeability‐saturation variation relation for continuum models.

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“…Most laboratory studies of core behaviour up to now have only focused on the morphology and the characteristics of fluid flow during MH formation [37][38][39], and far fewer have addressed the heat transport behaviour and the kinetics of the hydrate formation reaction in cores. Practically all hydrate formation studies have been conducted by either exposing the core-containing vessel to a constant low temperature [20,29] or by rapid cooling of the vessel in a step that lowers the temperature below the equilibrium level [23,35,40].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effectiveness of multi-stage cooling processes in improving the CH4-hydrate saturation uniformity in sandy laboratory samples

et al. 2019

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Laboratory-created samples of methane hydrate (MH)-bearing media are a necessity because of the rarity and difficulty of obtaining naturally-occurring samples. The hypothesis that the inevitable heterogeneity in the phase saturations of the laboratory samples may lead to unreliable and non-repeatable results provided the impetus for this study, which aimed to determine the conditions under which maximum uniformity can be achieved. To that end, we designed four experiments involving different multi-stage cooling regimes (in terms of their duration and number of stages) to induce MH formation under excess-water conditions. In the absence of direct visualization capabilities, we analysed the experimental results by means of numerical simulation, which provided high-resolution predictions of the spatial distributions of the phase saturations in the cores and enabled the estimation of the parameters controlling the kinetic MH-formation behaviour through history-matching. Analysis of the numerical results indicated that, under the conditions of the experiments and with the design of the reactor, significant heterogeneities in phase saturation distributions were observed in all cases, leading to the conclusion that it is not possible to obtain cores with uniform phase saturation. Additionally, contrary to expectations, heterogeneities increased with the number of cooling stages and the duration of cooling, and this was attributed to imperfect insulation of the upper part of the reactor. A set of simulations involving perfect insulation of the reactor top confirmed the validity of this assumption: (a) predicting the formation of high-uniformity MH-bearing cores that became more homogeneous as 1 The short version of the paper was presented at ICAE2018, Aug 22-25 (2018), Hong Kong. This paper is a substantial extension of the short version of the conference paper.2 the number of cooling stages and the length of the cooling period increased; and (b) providing important information for the improvement of the standard design of the experimental apparatus for the laboratory creation of MH-bearing cores using the excess water method.

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Pore‐Scale Determination of Gas Relative Permeability in Hydrate‐Bearing Sediments Using X‐Ray Computed Micro‐Tomography and Lattice Boltzmann Method

Cited by 121 publications

References 31 publications

Pore Fractal Characteristics of Hydrate‐Bearing Sands and Implications to the Saturated Water Permeability

Pore Fractal Characteristics of Hydrate‐Bearing Sands and Implications to the Saturated Water Permeability

Pore‐Scale Investigation of Methane Hydrate Dissociation Using the Lattice Boltzmann Method

Effectiveness of multi-stage cooling processes in improving the CH4-hydrate saturation uniformity in sandy laboratory samples

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