Behavior of gas seep bubbles below the hydrate stability zone

Binbin Wang1, Inok Jun1, Katie Hutschenreuter2, Scott A Socolofsky2, John D Kessler3, Andone C Lavery4, John A Breier Jr5 and Jeffrey Seewald6, (1)Texas A&M University College Station, College Station, TX, United States, (2)Texas A & M University College Station, College Station, TX, United States, (3)University of Rochester, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Rochester, NY, United States, (4)Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering, Woods Hole, MA, United States, (5)University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Edinburg, TX, United States, (6)Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry, Woods Hole, MA, United States
Abstract:
Two research cruises (GISR G07 and G08) have been carried out during 2014-2015 to study the behavior of natural gas seep plumes escaping on the seafloor below the hydrate stability zone at MC 118 and GC 600 in the Gulf of Mexico. Quantitative image measurements suggest both temporal and spatial variation of the bubble size and gas flow rate. Hydrate formation on the natural gas seep bubbles was a very fast process in the deep sea environment (890 and 1200 m depth), where the measured methane concentration in water close to the source was also saturated. The measured rise velocities of the bubbles differed significantly from the predicted terminal velocities using empirical equations in Clift et al. (1978). The measured bubble characteristics (size distribution and flow rate) were provided as input to a bubble dissolution model, which accounts for the effect of hydrate on the mass transfer coefficient. The model shows results consistent with the measurements.
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