Accelerated Formation of Methane Hydrate in Aluminum Foam

Abstract

The effects of aluminum foam (AF, average pore size of 1000 μm) on formation and growth kinetic behaviors of methane hydrate with 0.03 wt % sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) were investigated in a 300 cm 3 stainless steel vessel without stirring under 4.2, 6.0, and 8.3 MPa and 273.15 K. AF is a porous metal medium possessing large rough surface and excellent thermal conductivity. The experimental results demonstrated that porous AF played an acceleration role in the initial formation and further growth of methane hydrate by promoting hydrate nucleation and facilitating the removal of hydration heat. When AF was used, not only was the induction time reduced but the formation and growth were also sped up significantly, compared to conditions without it. In addition, under the above three pressures, the maximum formation rates (R f,max ) were increased by enormous times, 52% and 23%, with the help of AF, respectively. The relatively low increment of R f,max under high pressure most likely was caused by AF's own limitations (pore size). AF with smaller pore size can be selected for further study.

Reversible methane storage in porous hydrogel supported clathrates

“…Synthesis of methane hydrates was carried out using a method similar to that was reported in a previous paper (Yang et al, 2011). The experimental set-up is shown schematically in Figure 2.…”

Enhanced clathrate hydrate formation kinetics at near ambient temperatures and moderate pressures: Application to natural gas storage

“…To overcome the slow kinetics, continuous research efforts have been put forth in improving the kinetics of methane hydrate formation either by innovative reactor designs [14][15][16][17][18][19][20] including the use of different porous media [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29] or the use of kinetic promoters (predominantly surfactants) in order to enhance the rate of hydrate formation [30][31][32][33][34][35]. Though the kinetics of hydrate formation is improved by a choice of suitable reactor or kinetic promoter, there is no reduction of the high energy requirement due to low temperature and high pressure conditions of hydrate formation.…”

Rapid and repeatable methane storage in clathrate hydrates using gel-supported surfactant dry solution

“…Gas consumption experiments based on pressure-volumetemperature (P-V-T) measurements reported in our previous paper (Yang et al, 2011) were conducted in this work. The experimental apparatus is shown schematically in Fig.…”