Influence of A-type Zeolite on Methane Hydrate Formation

The porous medium has an important effect on hydrate formation. In this paper, the formation process and the gas storage capacity of the methane hydrate were investigated with A-type zeolite and Sodium Dodecyl Sulfate (SDS) existing in the system. The results show that A-type zeolite can influence methane hydrate formation. At the temperature of 273.5 K and pressure of 8.3 MPa, the distilled water with A-type zeolite can form methane hydrate with gaseous methane in 12 hours. The formation process of the system with A-type zeolite was quite steady and the amount of A-type zeolite can influence the gas storage capacity significantly. The adding of A-type zeolite with 0.067 g.(g water)(-1) into 2 x 10(-3) g.g(-1) SDS-water solution can increase the gas storage capacity, and the maximum increase rate was 31%. Simultaneously the promotion effect on hydrate formation of 3A-type zeolite is much more obvious than that of 5A-type zeolite when the water adding amounts are 0.033 g.g(-1) and 0.067 g.g(-1) at the experimental conditions.

Experimental investigation on TBAB clathrate hydrate slurry flows in a horizontal tube: Forced convective heat transfer behaviors

Tetra-n-butyl-ammonium bromide (TBAB) clathrate hydrate slurry (CHS) is one kind of secondary refrigerants, which is promising to be applied into air-conditioning or latent-heat transportation systems as a thermal storage or cold carrying medium for energy saving. It is a solid-liquid two phase mixture which is easy to produce and has high latent heat and good fluidity. In this paper, the heat transfer characteristics of TBAB slurry were investigated in a horizontal stainless steel tube under different solid mass fractions and flow velocities with constant heat flux. One velocity region of weakened heat transfer was found. Moreover, TBAB CHS was treated as a kind of Bingham fluids, and the influences of the solid particles, flow velocity and types of flow on the forced convective heat transfer coefficients of TBAB CHS were investigated. At last, criterial correlations of Nusselt number for laminar and turbulent flows in the form of power function were summarized, and the error with experimental results was within 20%.

Molecular Dynamics Simulation on Characteristics of Decomposition of Methane Hydrate in the Presence of Hydrogen Peroxide Solution

In this work, the characteristics of the decomposition of methane hydrate Structure I (SI) in the presence of hydrogen peroxide solution is investigated using the molecular dynamics simulation. The mechanism of the transformation process from the solid hydrate to the liquid is analyzed with the effect of hydrogen peroxide (HP) solution. In addition, the effect of ethylene glycol (EG) with the same molar concentration with HP on the methane hydrate dissociation is also studied. The results illustrate that both HP and EG promote well the hydrate dissociation. The work provides the important reference value for the experimental investigation into the promotion effect of HP on the hydrate dissociation.