Prediction of Methane, Water and Ice Properties for Numerical Gas Hydrate Simulations

Abstract

Gas hydrates are considered as near-future potential energy resources. Due to the lack of gas production data from gas hydrate reservoirs, numerical simulations are very important to make production predictions for both experimental studies and field production trials. Methane and water flow together when gas hydrates dissociate inside the sediments. Hence, many parameters of methane and water such as density, viscosity, enthalpy, internal energy and thermal conductivity should be calculated at different pressure and temperature values during non-isothermal numerical gas production simulations from gas hydrate reservoirs. As a solid phase, ice might exist in the pores due to the endothermic dissociation of gas hydrates. For this reason, water, methane, ice properties as a function of temperature and pressure are estimated by the Matlab codes written in this study: waterprop.m, gasprop.m, and iceprop.m. Density, viscosity, enthalpy, internal energy and thermal conductivity of water and methane calculated with the Matlab codes in this study, National Institute of Standards and Technology were compared, and the reliability of waterprop.m, gasprop.m and iceprop.m was proved.