Researchers at DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) have been investigating the formation of synthetic gas hydrates, with an emphasis on rapid and continuous hydrate formation techniques. The investigations focused on unconventional methods to reduce dissolution, induction, nucleation and crystallization times associated with natural and synthetic hydrates studies conducted in the...

Neutron diffraction runs and gas-consumption experiments based on pressure-volume-temperature measurements are conducted to study the kinetics of methane hydrate formation from hydrogenated and deuterated ice powder samples in the temperature range of 245-270 K up to high degrees of transformation. An improved theory of the hydrate growth in a polydisperse ensemble of randomly packed ice sphere...

The thickness of the free gas column below the base of the gas hydrate stability zone is a proxy for the pore pressure in the free gas bearing sediments underneath. In the study area the pore over-pressrues derived under this assumption range between 0 and 1430 kPa ± 30% which appear to be the typical maximum over-pressure that the gas hydrate sediments can withstand before hydro-fracturing occ...

Gas hydrates may play an important role in global climate change, carbon sequestration, energy production and seafloor stability. However, formation and dissociation pathways in geologically complex systems are poorly defined. We present a new approach to processing large amounts of data from a LUNA distributed sensing system (DSS) in the seafloor process simulator (SPS) at Oak Ridge National L...

We present an experimental study on the formation and dissociation characteristics of carbon dioxide (CO2) gas hydrates using Raman spectroscopy. The CO2 hydrates were formed from sodium chloride/water solutions with salinities of 0-10 wt %, which were pressurized with liquid CO2 in a stirred vessel at 6 MPa and a subcooling of 9.5 K. The formation of the CO2 hydrate resulted in a hydrate gel w...

This paper deals with the effects of a surfactant additive on the formation of methane hydrate in water system with and without sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS). The properties of sodium dodecyl sulfate are listed. The results manifested that the presence of SDS could not only accelerate the hydrate formation process, but also increase the partition coefficient of methane between hydrate and vapor ...

The investigation of surface tension is a very important task for gas hydrate studying. Surfactants can effectively reduce the surface tension, improve the gas storage capability of hydrate and increase the formation rate, shorten the induction time. The objective of this study were to obtain a better understanding of the role of surface tension on hydrate formation and build gas hydrate models...

Clathrate hydrates are crystalline compounds composed of hydrogen-bonded water molecules that form polyhedral cavities and trap small guest molecules such as methane, carbon dioxide, cyclopentane (CP), and tetrahydrofuran (THF). Understanding the formation and dissociation of clathrate hydrates is of significant importance to addressing some global challenges such as greenhouse gas mitigation a...

Characteristics such as temperature and pressure profiles for methane hydrate formation and dissociation in pure water, simulated seawater, and water–surfactant systems have been established. A hysteresis effect has been observed for repeated formation–dissociation cycles of the same methane–water system. In an attempt to maximize the uptake of methane during methane hydrate formation, the addi...