화학공학소재연구정보센터
Energy & Fuels, Vol.33, No.4, 3108-3122, 2019
Natural Gas Production from a Marine Clayey Hydrate Reservoir Formed in Seawater Using Depressurization at Constant Pressure, Depressurization by Constant Rate Gas Release, Thermal Stimulation, and Their Implications for Real Field Applications
The depressurization approach of methane production from a natural gas hydrate reservoir has been identified as the most energy-efficient production approach. However, some of the field-scale studies involving constant pressure depressurization (CPD) did not yield significant success. To address this, the constant rate gas release (CRD) depressurization approach was used to overcome the drawbacks of the CPD approach. The experimental investigations of these methods with and without thermal stimulation (TS) have not yet been investigated in detail for marine clayey hydrate reservoirs formed in seawater to understand their comparative effectiveness for methane gas recovery. Although common production approaches have been studied by many researchers on hydrate-bearing sand sediments, energy recovery from hydrate-rich clayey sediments has not yet been investigated in detail, which form the major dominant hydrate reservoirs of the hydrate resource pyramid across the globe. This work investigates in detail the potency of five different natural gas production techniques such as CRD, CPD, TS, and their combination to produce natural gas out of the marine clayey hydrate system. To simulate marine conditions, mud samples with 3 wt % of bentonite clay in seawater have been used for methane hydrate formation at an initial pressure of 8 +/- 0.2 MPa and a temperature of 278.15 +/- 1 K. The thermodynamic phase equilibrium study of methane hydrate in the marine clayey system has also been conducted to understand the phase stability of hydrates. Subsequently, a study on five different methane recovery approaches to recover natural gas from marine clayey hydrate systems has been carried out to understand their efficacy. For CRD depressurization, two rates, viz., 10 and 20 mL/min, have been used, whereas for CPD, two set pressures of 3.5 and 2.3 MPa have been used. TS was carried out by increasing the hydrate reservoir temperature from 278.15 to 298.15 K. Field implications of these five production schemes have also been discussed in detail for their real field applications.