Design of Experimental Loop for Natural Gas Hydrate Exploitation

Abstract

According to the presence of marine gas hydrate, an experimental loop to simulate exploitation of it has been designed. It means to accelerate the rate of natural gas hydrate (NGH) formation by several main mechanisms, stirring, spraying and bubbling. Thus, it provides the experimental samples for crushing the hydrate in-situ fragmentation. And then, a couple of experiments about crushing hydrates and transferring the hydrate slurries to the experimental platform of pipeline transportation flowing characteristics would be performed, so as to simulate the process of gas hydrate extraction and transportation. Finally, experimental research on submarine hydrate slurries rheology and flow would be fulfilled. And focuses on the multiphase flow of hydrate slurries in the process of pipeline transportation after extraction. Furthermore, in this paper, it not only systematically introduced the design results of crucial equipment and selection results of standard parts, but also elaborated the simulation experiment scheme and operational programme in detail. More importantly, the research results are conducive to provide and explore the method of large-scale exploitation of NGH.

Keywords:

• Natural gas Hydrate
• Physical Simulation
• Experimental Scheme Design
• Apparatus Design
• Process Flow

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the project “A new test method for solid-state fluidization of marine hydrates” [grant number 2016YFC0304008]. Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu, China.