MODELING NATURAL GAS HYDRATE EMPLACEMENT: A MIXED FINITE-ELEMENT FINITE-DIFFERENCE SIMULATOR ...

• Main Authors: Schnurle, Philippe, Liu, Char-Shine, Wang, Yunshuen
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: The University of British Columbia 2008
• Subjects: Ice; Methane hydrate; permafrost
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0041057; https://doi.library.ubc.ca/10.14288/1.0041057

Gas hydrates are ice-like crystalline solids composed of a hydrogen bonded water lattice entrapping low-molecular weighted gas molecules commonly of methane. These form under conditions of relative high pressure and low temperature, when the gas concentration exceeds those which can be held in solution, both in marine and on-land permafrost sediments. Simulating the mechanisms leading to natural gas hydrate emplacement in geological environments requires the modeling of the temperature, the pressure, the chemical reactions, and the convective/diffusive flow of the reactive species. In this study, we take into account the distribution of dissolved methane, methane gas, methane hydrate, and seawater, while ice and water vapor are neglected. The starting equations are those of the conservation of the transport of momentum (Darcy’s law), energy (heat balance of the passive sediments and active reactive species), and mass. These constitutive equations are then integrated into a 2-dimentional finite element in ...