The lithological characteristics of natural gas hydrates in permafrost on the Qinghai of China

• Published in: Scientific Reports
• Main Authors: Da Lei, Changmin Fu, Qihui Zhen, Zhongxing Wang, Ruo Wang
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Nature Portfolio 2022
• Subjects: Medicine; R; Science; Q; permafrost
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-17475-7; https://doaj.org/article/c84f93dacc2545ef9be24ac5698315dc

Abstract The environment is seriously threatened by the methane emitted as permafrost melts. Studying deposits of natural gas hydrates that include methane is therefore important. This study presents a novel approach based on the rock Archie formula to discover the porosity and saturation of gas hydrates. The relationship between resistivity and porosity and the porosity of hydrates was studied, and the results showed that the resistivity of hydrate reservoirs was closely related to porosity and hydrate saturation, and the polarization rate was only related to the concentration of natural gas hydrates and had nothing to do with porosity. Using the multi-channel time domain induced polarization (MTIP) method, the profile with five boreholes in the Muli area of the permafrost area of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau was observed, and the thickness of the shallow permafrost distribution and the underground structure were inferred based on the resistivity of the MTIP data. The polarization rate and hydrate saturation of the inversion assessed the presence of hydrates in the Muli region. The results show that the MTIP method can be used to detect the thickness of permafrost distribution, determine fault boundaries, reveal the distribution of natural gas transport paths, and evaluate the presence of natural gas hydrates.