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A special issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 April 2017) | Viewed by 68862

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Prof. Dr. Richard Coffin

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Department of Physical & Environmental Sciences, Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi, TX 78412, USA
Interests: methane; isotope geochemistry; carbon cycling; climate change; ocean models
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Prof. Dr. Bjørn Kvamme

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Department of Physics and Technology, University of Bergen, 5020 Bergen, Norway
Interests: thermodynamics and statistical thermodynamics; gas hydrates stability and kinetics; polar solutions and electrolyte solutions; kinetics of phase transitions; emulsion fundamentals; fundamentals of adsorption and practical applications

Prof. Dr. Stephen Masutani

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Hawaii Natural Energy Institute, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA
Interests: thermochemistry; kinetics; transport phenomena; hydrates; multi-phase flows; renewable energy; carbon sequestration

Dr. Norio Tenma

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Deputy Director, Research Institute of Energy Frontier, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (A(ST), Tsukuba-West, 16-1, Onogawa, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8569, Japan
Interests: modeling; numerical simulation; geomechanics
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Dr. Tsutomu Uchida

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Division of Applied Physics, Faculty of Engineering, Hokkaido University, Hokkaido, Japan
Interests: physical properties of gas hydrates; ice physics
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

A special issue of the open access journal Energies is planned on gas hydrate research. A discounted Article Processing Charge will be offered to all participants of past International Workshops on Methane Hydrate Research and Development, including Fiery Ice 2016.

Authors are invited to submit manuscripts for peer review on a broad range of topics related to gas hydrates including (but not limited to):

resource assessment;
policy;
exploration;
reservoir modeling;
production modeling;
environmental studies;
fundamental laboratory investigations; and
hydrate thermodynamics and kinetics.

Prof. Richard B. Coffin
Prof. Dr. Bjørn Kvamme
Prof. Dr. Stepehn Masutani
Prof. Dr. Norio Tenma
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Tsutomu Uchida
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Energies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

Gas hydrates
Hydrate thermodynamics and kinetics.
Fiery Ice
Climate change
Coastal stability mining
Resource assessment
Policy
Exploration
Reservoir modeling
Production modeling
Environmental studies
Fundamental laboratory investigations
Hydrate thermodynamics and kinetics

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Published Papers (12 papers)

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9405 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Characterization and Prediction of the Gas Hydrate Reservoir at the Second Offshore Gas Production Test Site in the Eastern Nankai Trough, Japan

by Machiko Tamaki, Tetsuya Fujii and Kiyofumi Suzuki

Energies 2017, 10(10), 1678; https://doi.org/10.3390/en10101678 - 23 Oct 2017

Cited by 72 | Viewed by 7375

Abstract

Following the world’s first offshore production test that was conducted from a gas hydrate reservoir by a depressurization technique in 2013, the second offshore production test has been planned in the eastern Nankai Trough. In 2016, the drilling survey was performed ahead of the production test, and logging data that covers the reservoir interval were newly obtained from three wells around the test site: one well for geological survey, and two wells for monitoring surveys, during the production test. The formation evaluation using the well log data suggested that our target reservoir has a more significant heterogeneity in the gas hydrate saturation distribution than we expected, although lateral continuity of sand layers is relatively good. To evaluate the spatial distribution of gas hydrate, the integration analysis using well and seismic data was performed. The seismic amplitude analysis supports the lateral reservoir heterogeneity that has a significant positive correlation with the resistivity log data at the well locations. The spatial distribution of the apparent low-resistivity interval within the reservoir observed from log data was investigated by the P-velocity volume derived from seismic inversion. The integrated results were utilized for the pre-drill prediction of the reservoir quality at the producing wells. These approaches will reduce the risk of future commercial production from the gas hydrate reservoir. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Methane Hydrate Research and Development)

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23920 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Gas-In-Place Estimate for Potential Gas Hydrate Concentrated Zone in the Kumano Basin, Nankai Trough Forearc, Japan

by Katie Taladay, Brian Boston and Gregory F. Moore

Energies 2017, 10(10), 1552; https://doi.org/10.3390/en10101552 - 9 Oct 2017

Cited by 18 | Viewed by 6656

Abstract

Methane hydrate concentrated zones (MHCZs) have become targets for energy exploration along continental margins worldwide. In 2013, exploratory drilling in the eastern Nankai Trough at Daini Atsumi Knoll confirmed that MHCZs tens of meters thick occur directly above bottom simulating reflections imaged in seismic data. This study uses 3-dimensional (3D) seismic and borehole data collected from the Kumano Basin offshore Japan to identify analogous MHCZs. Our survey region is located ~100 km southwest of the Daini Atsumi Knoll, site of the first offshore gas hydrate production trial. Here we provide a detailed analysis of the gas hydrate system within our survey area of the Kumano forearc including: (1) the 3D spatial distribution of bottom simulating reflections; (2) a thickness map of potential MHCZs; and (3) a volumetric gas-in-place estimate for these MHCZs using constraints from our seismic interpretations as well as previously collected borehole data. There is evidence for two distinct zones of concentrated gas hydrate 10–90 m thick, and we estimate that the amount of gas-in-place potentially locked up in these MHCZs is 1.9–46.3 trillion cubic feet with a preferred estimate of 15.8 trillion cubic feet. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Methane Hydrate Research and Development)

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7870 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Hydrogen Storage Capacity of Tetrahydrofuran and Tetra-N-Butylammonium Bromide Hydrates Under Favorable Thermodynamic Conditions

by Joshua T. Weissman and Stephen M. Masutani

Energies 2017, 10(8), 1225; https://doi.org/10.3390/en10081225 - 17 Aug 2017

Cited by 8 | Viewed by 5496

Abstract

An experimental study was conducted to evaluate the feasibility of employing binary hydrates as a medium for H₂storage. Two reagents, tetrahydrofuran (THF) and tetra-n-butylammonium bromide (TBAB), which had been reported previously to have potential to form binary hydrates with H₂ under favorable conditions (i.e., low pressures and high temperatures), were investigated using differential scanning calorimetry and Raman spectroscopy. A scale-up facility was employed to quantify the hydrogen storage capacity of THF binary hydrate. Gas chromatography (GC) and pressure drop analyses indicated that the weight percentages of H₂ in hydrate were less than 0.1%. The major conclusions of this investigation were: (1) H₂ can be stored in binary hydrates at relatively modest pressures and temperatures which are probably feasible for transportation applications; and (2) the storage capacity of H₂ in binary hydrate formed from aqueous solutions of THF over a concentration range extending from 2.78 to 8.34 mol % and at temperatures above 263 K and pressures below 11 MPa was <0.1 wt %. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Methane Hydrate Research and Development)

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3231 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Utilizing Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics and Reactive Transport to Model CH₄ Production from the Nankai Trough Gas Hydrate Reservoir

by Khadijeh Qorbani, Bjørn Kvamme and Tatiana Kuznetsova

Energies 2017, 10(7), 1064; https://doi.org/10.3390/en10071064 - 22 Jul 2017

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 4493

Abstract

The ongoing search for new sources of energy has brought natural gas hydrate (NGH) reservoirs to the forefront of attention in both academia and the industry. The amount of gas reserves trapped within these reservoirs surpasses all of the conventional fossil fuel sources explored so far, which makes it of utmost importance to predict their production potential and safety. One of the challenges facing those attempting to analyse their behaviour is that the large number of involved phases make NGHs unable to ever reach equilibrium in nature. Field-scale experiments are expensive and time consuming. However, computer simulations have now become capable of modelling different gas production scenarios, as well as production optimization analyses. In addition to temperature and pressure, independent thermodynamic parameters for hydrate stabilization include the hydrate composition and concentrations for all co-existing phases. It is therefore necessary to develop and implement realistic kinetic models accounting for all significant routes for dissociation and reformation. The reactive transport simulator makes it easy to deploy nonequilibrium thermodynamics for the study of CH₄ production from hydrate-bearing sediments by considering each hydrate-related transition as a separate pseudo reaction. In this work, we have used the expanded version of the RetrasoCodeBright (RCB) reactive transport simulator to model exploitation of the methane hydrate (MH) reservoir located in the Nankai Trough, Japan. Our results showed that higher permeabilities in the horizontal direction dominated the pressure drop propagation throughout the hydrate layers and affected their hydrate dissociation rates. Additionally, the comparison of the vertical well versus the horizontal well pattern indicated that hydrate dissociation was slightly higher in the vertical well scenario compared to the horizontal. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Methane Hydrate Research and Development)

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1253 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Design of Ecological CO₂ Enrichment System for Greenhouse Production using TBAB + CO₂ Semi-Clathrate Hydrate

by Satoshi Takeya, Sanehiro Muromachi, Tatsuo Maekawa, Yoshitaka Yamamoto, Hiroko Mimachi, Takahiro Kinoshita, Tetsuro Murayama, Hiroki Umeda, Dong-Hyuk Ahn, Yasunaga Iwasaki, Hidenori Hashimoto, Tsutomu Yamaguchi, Katsunori Okaya and Seiji Matsuo

Energies 2017, 10(7), 927; https://doi.org/10.3390/en10070927 - 4 Jul 2017

Cited by 24 | Viewed by 5911

Abstract

This paper proposes an innovative CO₂ enrichment system for crop production under a controlled greenhouse environment by means of tetra-n-butylammonium bromide (TBAB) + CO₂ semi-clathrate hydrate (SC). In this system, CO₂ is captured directly from exhaust gas from a combustion heater at night, which can be used for stimulating photosynthesis of crops in greenhouses during daytime. Although the gas capacity of TBAB + CO₂ SC is less than that of CO₂ gas hydrate, it is shown that TBAB + CO₂ SC can store CO₂ for CO₂ enrichment in crop production even under moderate pressure conditions (<1.0 MPa) at 283 K. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Methane Hydrate Research and Development)

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710 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Natural Gas Hydrate as a Storage Mechanism for Safe, Sustainable and Economical Production from Offshore Petroleum Reserves

by Michael T. Kezirian and S. Leigh Phoenix

Energies 2017, 10(6), 828; https://doi.org/10.3390/en10060828 - 20 Jun 2017

Cited by 30 | Viewed by 6555

Abstract

Century Fathom presents an innovative process to utilize clathrate hydrates for the production, storage and transportation of natural gas from off-shore energy reserves in deep ocean environments. The production scheme was developed by considering the preferred state of natural gas in the deep ocean and addressing the hazards associated with conventional techniques to transport natural gas. It also is designed to mitigate the significant shipping cost inherent with all methods. The resulting proposed scheme restrains transport in the hydrate form to the ocean and does not attempt to supply energy to the residential consumer. Instead; the target recipients are industrial operations. The resulting operational concept is intrinsically safer by design; environmentally sustainable and significantly cost-effective compared with currently proposed schemes for the use of natural gas hydrates and has the potential to be the optimal solution for new production of reserves; depending on the distance to shore and capacity of the petroleum reserve. A potential additional benefit is the byproduct of desalinated water. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Methane Hydrate Research and Development)

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1361 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Feasibility Study on Hydrate-Based Technology for Transporting CO₂ from Industrial to Agricultural Areas

by Seiji Matsuo, Hiroki Umeda, Satoshi Takeya and Toyohisa Fujita

Energies 2017, 10(5), 728; https://doi.org/10.3390/en10050728 - 20 May 2017

Cited by 7 | Viewed by 4833

Abstract

Climate change caused by global warming has become a serious issue in recent years. The main purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the above system to quantitatively supply CO₂ or CO₂ hydrate from industrial to agricultural areas. In this analysis, several transportation methods, namely, truck, hydrate tank lorry, and pipeline, were considered. According to this analysis, the total CO₂ supply costs including transportation ranged from 15 to 25 yen/kg-CO₂ when the transportation distance was 50 km or less. The cost of the hydrate-based method increased with the transport distance in contrast to the liquefied CO₂ approach. However, the technology of supplying CO₂ hydrate had merit by using a local cooling technique for cooling specific parts of agricultural products. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Methane Hydrate Research and Development)

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1849 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Methane Hydrate Formation in Marine Sediment from South China Sea with Different Water Saturations

by Yu Zhang, Xiaosen Li, Yi Wang, Zhaoyang Chen and Gang Li

Energies 2017, 10(4), 561; https://doi.org/10.3390/en10040561 - 20 Apr 2017

Cited by 18 | Viewed by 4645

Abstract

The kinetics of methane hydrate formation in marine sediments with different water saturations are important to assess the feasibility of the hydrate production and understand the process of the secondary hydrate formation in the gas production from hydrate reservoir. In this paper, the behaviors of methane hydrate formation in marine sediments from the South China Sea at different water saturation levels were experimentally studied in isobaric conditions. The marine sediments used in the experiments have the mean pore diameter of 12.178 nm, total pore volume of 4.997 × 10⁻² mL/g and surface area of 16.412 m²/g. The volume fraction of water in the marine sediments ranges from 30% to 50%. The hydrate formation rate and the final water conversion increase with the decrease of the formation temperature at the water saturation of 40%. At the same experimental conditions, the hydrate formation rate decreases with the increase of the water saturation from 40% to 50% due to the reduction of the gas diffusion speed. At the water saturation of 30%, the hydrate formation rate is lower than that at the water saturation of 40% due to the effect of the equilibrium hydrate formation pressure, which increases with the decrease of the water saturation. The final water conversion is shown to increase with the increase of the water saturation, even the formation process at higher water did not end. The experiments at low water saturation show a better repeatability than that at high water saturation. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Methane Hydrate Research and Development)

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2167 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Using a Reactive Transport Simulator to Simulate CH4 Production from Bear Island Basin in the Barents Sea Utilizing the Depressurization Method†

by Khadijeh Qorbani, Bjørn Kvamme and Tatiana Kuznetsova

Energies 2017, 10(2), 187; https://doi.org/10.3390/en10020187 - 8 Feb 2017

Cited by 9 | Viewed by 4129

Abstract

The enormous amount of methane stored in natural gas hydrates (NGHs)worldwide offers a signiﬁcant potential source of energy. NGHs will be generally unable to reach thermodynamic equilibrium at their in situ reservoir conditions due to the number of active phases involved. Lack of reliable ﬁeld data makes it difﬁcult to predict the production potential and safety of CH4 production from NGHs. While the computer simulations will never be able to replace ﬁeld data, one can apply state-of-the-artmodellingtechniquestoevaluateseveralpossiblelong-termscenarios. Realistic kinetic models for hydrate dissociation and reformation will be required, as well as analysis of all phase transition routes. This work utilizes our in-house extension of RetrasoCodeBright (RCB), a reactive transport simulator, to perform a gas hydrate production case study of the Bjørnøya (Bear Island) basin, a promising ﬁeld with very limited geological data reported by available ﬁeld studies. The use of a reactive transport simulator allowed us to implement non-equilibrium thermodynamics for analysisofCH4 production from the gas hydrates by treating each phase transition involving hydrates as a pseudo reaction. Our results showed a rapid propagation of the pressure drop through the reservoir following the imposition of pressure drawdown at the well. Consequently, gas hydrate dissociation and CH4 production began in the early stages of the ﬁve-year simulation period. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Methane Hydrate Research and Development)

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4314 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Gas Hydrate Growth Kinetics: A Parametric Study

by Remi-Erempagamo Tariyemienyo Meindinyo and Thor Martin Svartaas

Energies 2016, 9(12), 1021; https://doi.org/10.3390/en9121021 - 5 Dec 2016

Cited by 11 | Viewed by 6084

Abstract

Gas hydrate growth kinetics was studied at a pressure of 90 bars to investigate the effect of temperature, initial water content, stirring rate, and reactor size in stirred semi-batch autoclave reactors. The mixing energy during hydrate growth was estimated by logging the power consumed. The theoretical model by Garcia-Ochoa and Gomez for estimation of the mass transfer parameters in stirred tanks has been used to evaluate the dispersion parameters of the system. The mean bubble size, impeller power input per unit volume, and impeller Reynold’s number/tip velocity were used for analyzing observed trends from the gas hydrate growth data. The growth behavior was analyzed based on the gas consumption and the growth rate per unit initial water content. The results showed that the growth rate strongly depended on the flow pattern in the cell, the gas-liquid mass transfer characteristics, and the mixing efficiency from stirring. Scale-up effects indicate that maintaining the growth rate per unit volume of reactants upon scale-up with geometric similarity does not depend only on gas dispersion in the liquid phase but may rather be a function of the specific thermal conductance, and heat and mass transfer limitations created by the limit to the degree of the liquid phase dispersion is batched and semi-batched stirred tank reactors. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Methane Hydrate Research and Development)

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Review

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218 KiB

Open AccessReview

A Review of the Methane Hydrate Program in Japan

by Ai Oyama and Stephen M. Masutani

Energies 2017, 10(10), 1447; https://doi.org/10.3390/en10101447 - 21 Sep 2017

Cited by 63 | Viewed by 6672

Abstract

In this paper, methane hydrate R&D in Japan was examined in the context of Japan’s evolving energy policies. Methane hydrates have been studied extensively in Japanese national R&D programs since 1993, with the goal of utilizing them as an energy resource. Currently, the Research Consortium for Methane Hydrate Resources in Japan (MH 21) is in the third phase of a project that began in early 2002. Based on publicly available reports and other publications, and presentations made at the ten International Workshops for Methane Hydrate Research and Development, we have attempted to provide a timeline and a succinct summary of the major technical accomplishments of MH 21 during project Phases 1, 2, and 3. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Methane Hydrate Research and Development)

950 KiB

Open AccessReview

Review of Fundamental Properties of Gas Hydrates: Breakout Sessions of the International Workshop on Methane Hydrate Research and Development

by Tsutomu Uchida, Bjørn Kvamme, Richard B. Coffin, Norio Tenma, Ai Oyama and Stephen M. Masutani

Energies 2017, 10(6), 747; https://doi.org/10.3390/en10060747 - 25 May 2017

Cited by 9 | Viewed by 4793

Abstract

The International Workshop on Methane Hydrate (MH) Research and Development (the Fiery Ice Workshop) began in 2001 with the goal of promoting laboratory and field research collaborations and providing a forum to share new knowledge on MH pertaining to coastal stability, climate change, and energy. Ten workshops have been held over the past 15 years in different countries. Each workshop has included presentations on national programs and policy areas, and new research, along with breakout sessions that focused on current key topics. Two or three concurrent breakout sessions were conducted twice during each workshop. In this paper, we review the breakout sessions on hydrate fundamental properties with the goal of identifying the major accomplishments and changes in hydrate science and engineering related to determining fundamental MH properties over the past 15 years. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Methane Hydrate Research and Development)

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