Thermal Stimulation Based Methane Production from Hydrate Bearing Quartz Sediment

Abstract

Natural gas hydrates represent a potentially substantial unconventional natural gas resource and the recovery of permafrost hydrates has seen significant attention over the past decade. Laboratory study of different growth and dissociation methods is an important step in the development of gas hydrate production methods. The formation and dissociation behavior of gas hydrates in quartz sand sediment is investigated on a large laboratory scale reactor with a sample volume of 59.3 L. Hydrate saturations of 10% and 30% pore space volume are dissociated via a point source thermal stimulation method using both a low heating rate of 20 W and a high heating rate of 100 W. Hydrate growth via gas invasion method resulted in nonhomogenous hydrate formation. Secondary hydrate formation was observed during prolonged hydrate formation periods in a quasi-repeatable manner. Peak efficiency rates of gas production ranged from 91% to 72% and net "end of test" efficiencies from 86% to 41%. Higher initial hydrate saturations resulted in better production performance while greater heating rates resulted in higher peak efficiency rates. Higher hydrate saturations displayed heater temperature spikes followed by a transition zone where heater temperatures stabilized due to the onset of increased convective heat transport.

Review of natural gas hydrates as an energy resource: Prospects and challenges

“…The techniques of heat delivery include the changing of environment temperature (water/air bath heating) [102][103][104][105], injection of hot fluid into the hydrate sample [101], supplying heat via point sources [107] and combustion of in situ methane [106,108]. While water/air bath heating is a technique that work in the laboratory setting, it will not be feasible for use in the field.…”

Numerical analysis of methane hydrate decomposition experiments by depressurization around freezing point in porous media

“…They are all based on the principle of shifting the thermodynamic equilibrium conditions, and gas can be extracted by one or the combinations of these methods using different kinds of well configurations [15][16][17][18][19]. Another methane production method is referred to as the CO 2 replacement, which involves the substitution of CO 2 for CH 4 in the crystal lattices [20,21].…”

Energy from Waste Materials and Unconventional Sources

“…Natural gas hydrate is a vast energy resource with global distribution in permafrost regions and in the oceans that it can be evaluated as a potential energy source (Feng et al 2015;Zhao et al 2015;Song et al 2015). Natural gas hydrates represent a potentially substantial unconventional natural gas resource and the recovery of permafrost hydrates has seen significant attention over the past decade (Fitzgerald and Castaldi 2013).…”