Hydrate-based Methane Recovery from Coal Mine Methane Gas in Scale-up Equipment with Bubbling

Abstract

The hydrate-based methane (CH4) recovery from coal mine methane (CMM) gas using the bubble method was investigated with a set of scale-up equipment in this work. The gas bubble with different size was created by a bubble plate located on the bottom of the equipment. By the scale-up equipment, the hydrate formation and the hydrate shape were recorded by a video. With the gas bubble rising from the bottom to the top of the reactor, gas hydrate forms firstly at the bubble interface in liquid, then the hydrate gradually grows up and accumulates in the gas/liquid interface. The similar hydrate morphology was observed at the different bubble size and gas flow rate. The gas/liquid ratio, the bubble size and the gas flow rate have an obvious effect on the hydrate-based CH4 recovery process. The experimental results illustrate that the gas/liquid ratio of 0.25, the gas bubble of 50μm and the gas flow rate of 16.13ml/min/L are optimal to recover CH4 from CMM gas under the conditions of 277.15K and 1.50MPa.