Energy-efficient methods for production methane from natural gas hydrates

Abstract

Gas hydrates now are expected to be one of the most important future unconventional energy resources. In this paper, researches on gas hydrate exploitation in laboratory and field were reviewed and discussed from the aspects of energy efficiency. Different exploiting methods and different types of hydrate reservoir were selected to study their effects on energy efficiencies. Both laboratory studies and field tests have shown that the improved technologies can help to increase efficiency for gas hydrate exploitation. And it also showed the trend that gas hydrate exploitation started to change from permafrost to marine. Energy efficiency ratio (EER) and energy return on energy invested (EROI) were introduced as an indicator of efficiency for natural gas hydrate exploitation. An energy-efficient hydrate production process, called “Hydrate Chain Energy System (HCES)”, including treatment of flue gas, replacement of CH4 with CO2, separation of CO2 from CH4, and storage and transportation of CH4 in hydrate form, was proposed for future natural gas hydrate exploitation. In the meanwhile, some problems, such as mechanism of CO2 replacement, mechanism of CO2 separation, CH4 storage and transportation are also needed to be solved for increasing the energy efficiency of gas hydrate exploitation.