Investigating the Interaction Effects between Reservoir Deformation and Hydrate Dissociation in Hydrate-Bearing Sediment by Depressurization Method

Lijia Li, Xiaosen Li, Yi Wang, Chaozhong Qin, Bo Li, Yongjiang Luo and Jingchun Feng
Additional contact information
Lijia Li: State Key Laboratory of Coal Mine Disaster Dynamics and Control, College of Resources and Safety Science, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400044, China
Xiaosen Li: State Key Laboratory of Coal Mine Disaster Dynamics and Control, College of Resources and Safety Science, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400044, China
Yi Wang: Guangzhou Institute of Energy Conversion, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou 510640, China
Chaozhong Qin: State Key Laboratory of Coal Mine Disaster Dynamics and Control, College of Resources and Safety Science, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400044, China
Bo Li: State Key Laboratory of Coal Mine Disaster Dynamics and Control, College of Resources and Safety Science, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400044, China
Yongjiang Luo: State Key Laboratory of Coal Mine Disaster Dynamics and Control, College of Resources and Safety Science, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400044, China
Jingchun Feng: Institute of Environmental and Ecological Engineering, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, China

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 3, 1-16

Abstract: Natural gas hydrate (NGH) has been widely focused on having great potential for alternative energy. Numerous studies on gas production from hydrate-bearing sediments have been conducted in both laboratory and field. Since the strength of hydrate-bearing sediments depends on the saturation of NGH, the decomposition of NGH may cause the failure of sediments, then leading to reservoir deformation and other geological hazards. Plenty of research has shown that the reservoir deformation caused by hydrate decomposition is considerable. In order to investigate this, the influence of sediment deformation on the production of NGH, a fully coupled thermo-hydro-chemo-mechanical (THMC) model is established in this study. The interaction effects between reservoir deformation and hydrate dissociation are discussed by comparing the simulation results of the mechanical coupling and uncoupled models on the laboratory scale. Results show that obvious differences in behaviors between gas and water production are observed among these two models. Compared to the mechanical uncoupled model, the mechanical coupling model shows a significant compaction process when given a load equal to the initial pore pressure, which leads to a remarkable decrease of effective porosity and reservoir permeability, then delays the pore pressure drop rate and reduces the maximum gas production rate. It takes a longer time for gas production in the mechanical coupling model. Since the reservoir temperature is impacted by the comprehensive effects of the heat transfer from the boundary and the heat consumption of hydrate decomposition, the reduced maximum gas production rate and extended gas production process for the mechanical coupling model lead to the minimum reservoir temperature in the mechanical coupling model larger than that of the mechanical uncoupled model. The reduction of the effective porosity for the mechanical coupling model causes a larger cumulative water production. The results of this paper indicate that the reservoir deformation in the gas production process should be taken into account by laboratory and numerical methods to accurately predict the behaviors of gas production on the field scale.

Keywords: natural gas hydrate; THMC coupling model; sediment deformation; gas production (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/3/548/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/3/548/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:14:y:2021:i:3:p:548-:d:484781

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().