Experimental Dissociation of Methane Hydrates Through Depressurization

Abstract:

We dissociated methane hydrates by stepwise depressurization. The initial hydrates were formed by injecting gas into a cylindrical sample of brine-saturated, coarse-grained sand at hydrate-stable conditions with the intention of reaching three-phase equilibrium. The sample was initially at 1°C with a pore pressure of 1775 psi and a salinity of 7 wt. % NaBr. The depressurization setup consisted of one pump filled with tap water attached to the confining fluid port and a second pump attached to the inlet port where the methane was injected. Depressurization was conducted over sixteen hours at a constant temperature of 1°C. The pore pressure was stepwise reduced from 1775 psi to atmospheric pressure by pulling known volumes of gas from the sample. After each extraction, we recorded the instantaneous and equilibrium pore pressure. 0.503 moles of methane were removed from the sample. The pore pressure decreased smoothly and nonlinearly with the cumulative gas withdrawn from the sample. We interpret that hydrate began to dissociate immediately with depressurization, and it continued to dissociate when the pressure decreased below the three-phase pressure for 1°C and 0 wt. % salinity. Two breaks in slope in the pressure vs. mass extracted data are bounded by smooth, nonlinear curves with differing slopes on either side. We attribute the breaks to dissociation of three zones of hydrate concentration. We created a box model to simulate the experimental behavior. For a 10% initial gas saturation (estimated from the hydrate formation experiment and based on mass conservation), an initial hydrate saturation of 55% is required to match the total methane extracted from the sample. Future experiments will be conducted over a longer timespan while monitoring hydrate dissociation with CT imaging throughout the process.