Safe, efficient, and economical gas
recovery from hydrate-bearing
sediments (HBS) is a severe issue that determines if natural gas hydrate
(NGH), as an alternative energy in the future as fossil fuels approach
depletion, is applied. Researchers worldwide are committed to developing
a safe, efficient, and economical method of gas recovery from HBS.
However, until now, most methods are still being validated and not
have not been identified to exploit NGH commercially. Therefore, it
is appropriate and significant to discuss researchers’ achievements
to exploit NGH and summarize their potential benefits and challenges.
This paper introduces nearly all the conventional and latest NGH exploitation
methods and reviews field trials’ development characteristics.
On the basis of laboratory experiments and field trials, key challenges
restricting safe and efficient NGH development, and the existing research
gaps reflecting these challenges, are also presented from the gas
production, security, and economic aspects. The unfavorable situation
mainly comprises the insufficient sensible heat, extremely low thermal
conductivity, and ultralow permeability of HBS, lower gas production
rate and its intense fluctuations, higher water-to-gas ratio (WGR),
geological deformation, and subsidence of HBS attributed to excessive
sand production, driving the consideration of some possible solutions.
Given this, a new method for enhanced gas production from HBS based
on the combination of depressurization (DP) and an in-situ heat generation
method is proposed. Benefiting from multiple theoretical enhancement
mechanisms such as replenishing energy to HBS with in-situ heat generation
powders, cementing and strengthening the HBS skeleton, improving the
gas permeability in HBS, decreasing the WGR based on blocking water,
and removing gas characteristics of hydration products, this method
could be expected to achieve promising long-term performance of gas
production, which will be theoretically and practically significant
to study commercial gas production.