Title: Experimental study on methane hydrate formation and evaluation in porous medium

Authors: Zhiqiang Wang; Shuxia Li; Fubo Wu; Jian Hou

Addresses: School of Petroleum Engineering, China University of Petroleum (East China), No. 66, Changjiang West Road, Huangdao District, Qingdao, Shandong, 266580, China ' School of Petroleum Engineering, China University of Petroleum (East China), No. 66, Changjiang West Road, Huangdao District, Qingdao, Shandong, 266580, China ' School of Petroleum Engineering, China University of Petroleum (East China), No. 66, Changjiang West Road, Huangdao District, Qingdao, Shandong, 266580, China ' School of Petroleum Engineering, China University of Petroleum (East China), No. 66, Changjiang West Road, Huangdao District, Qingdao, Shandong, 266580, China

Abstract: Methane hydrate (MH) is considered as a potential energy resource and its laboratory research is very significant. Although many patterns about MH formation have been proposed by many researchers, the formation rate and formation efficiency of MH have rarely been reported. In this work, two patterns of gas injection (intermittent gas injection and continuous gas injection) have been conducted to simulate the hydrate reservoir formation process. It is shown that the continuous gas injection pattern can result in higher hydrate saturation in a relatively short time, while in the intermittent pattern, the early formation of MH near the gas inlet valve will prevent the later injected CH₄. The continuous gas injection pattern can keep higher pressure in the reactor, which is beneficial to the MH formation. Moreover, two evaluation indicators, hydrate formation efficiency (E_s) and formation rate (V_e), have been proposed to compare the performance of the two patterns. The continuous gas injection pattern has higher E_s of 0.837 and V_e of 9.03E-04 min⁻¹, while in intermittent gas injection, E_s is 0.754 and average V_e is 7.41E-05 min⁻¹. It is recommended that continuous gas injection pattern is used in the laboratory. [Received: November 2, 2017; Accepted: April 15, 2018]

Keywords: methane hydrate; porous medium; injection pattern; formation efficiency; formation rate.

DOI: 10.1504/IJOGCT.2019.101487

International Journal of Oil, Gas and Coal Technology, 2019 Vol.21 No.4, pp.482 - 494

Received: 02 Nov 2017
Accepted: 15 Apr 2018
Published online: 11 Aug 2019 *

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