Natural gas hydrates have been hailed as a new and promising unconventional alternative energy,especially as fossil fuels approach depletion,energy consumption soars,and fossil fuel prices rise,owing to their extensiv...Natural gas hydrates have been hailed as a new and promising unconventional alternative energy,especially as fossil fuels approach depletion,energy consumption soars,and fossil fuel prices rise,owing to their extensive distribution,abundance,and high fuel efficiency.Gas hydrate reservoirs are similar to a storage cupboard in the global carbon cycle,containing most of the world's methane and accounting for a third of Earth's mobile organic carbon.We investigated gas hydrate stability zone burial depths from the viewpoint of conditions associated with stable existence of gas hydrates,such as temperature,pressure,and heat flow,based on related data collected by the global drilling programs.Hydrate-related areas are estimated using various biological,geochemical and geophysical tools.Based on a series of previous investigations,we cover the history and status of gas hydrate exploration in the USA,Japan,South Korea,India,Germany,the polar areas,and China.Then,we review the current techniques for hydrate exploration in a global scale.Additionally,we briefly review existing techniques for recovering methane from gas hydrates,including thermal stimulation,depressurization,chemical injection,and CH4-CO2 exchange,as well as corresponding global field trials in Russia,Japan,United States,Canada and China.In particular,unlike diagenetic gas hydrates in coarse sandy sediments in Japan and gravel sediments in the United States and Canada,most gas hydrates in the northem South China Sea are non-diagenetic and exist in fine-grained sediments with a vein-like morphology.Therefore,especially in terms of the offshore production test in gas hydrate reservoirs in the Shenhu area in the north slope of the South China Sea,Chinese scientists have proposed two unprecedented techniques that have been verified during the field trials:solid fluidization and formation fluid extraction.Herein,we introduce the two production techniques,as well as the so-called"fbur-in-one"environmental monitoring system employed during the Shenhu production te展开更多
Natural gas hydrate(NGH)has been widely considered as an alternative form of energy with huge potential,due to its tremendous reserves,cleanness and high energy density.Several countries involving Japan,Canada,India a...Natural gas hydrate(NGH)has been widely considered as an alternative form of energy with huge potential,due to its tremendous reserves,cleanness and high energy density.Several countries involving Japan,Canada,India and China have launched national projects on the exploration and exploitation of gas hydrate resources.At the beginning of this century,an early trial production of hydrate resources was carried out in Mallik permafrost region,Canada.Japan has conducted the first field test from marine hydrates in 2013,followed by another trial in 2017.China also made its first trial production from marine hydrate sediments in 2017.Yet the low production efficiency,ice/hydrate regeneration,and sand problems are still commonly encountered;the worldwide progress is far before commercialization.Up to now,many gas production techniques have been proposed,and a few of them have been adopted in the field production tests.Nevertheless,hardly any method appears really promising;each of them shows limitations at certain conditions.Therefore,further efforts should be made on the economic efficiency as well as sustainability and environmental impacts.In this paper,the investigations on NGH exploitation techniques are comprehensively reviewed,involving depressurization,thermal stimulation,chemical inhibitor injection,CO2–CH4 exchange,their combinations,and some novel techniques.The behavior of each method and its further potential in the field test are discussed.The advantages and limitations of laboratory studies are also analyzed.The work could give some guidance in the future formulation of exploitation scheme and evaluation of gas production behavior from hydrate reservoirs.展开更多
Seismic and rock physics play important roles in gas hydrate exploration and production.To provide a clear cognition of the applications of geophysical methods on gas hydrate,this work presents a review of the seismic...Seismic and rock physics play important roles in gas hydrate exploration and production.To provide a clear cognition of the applications of geophysical methods on gas hydrate,this work presents a review of the seismic techniques,rock physics models,and production methods in gas hydrate exploration and exploitation.We first summarize the commonly used seismic techniques in identifying the gas hydrate formations and analyze the limitations and challenges of these techniques.Then,we outline the rock physics models linking the micro-scale physical properties and macro-scale seismic velocities of gas hydrate sediments,and generalize the common workflow,showing the frequently-used procedures of building models with detailed analysis of the potential uncertainties.Afterwards,we summarize the production techniques of gas hydrate and point out the problems regarding the petrophysical basis and abnormal seismic responses.In the end,considering the geological and engineering problems,we come up with several aspects of using geophysical techniques to solve the problems in gas hydrate exploration and production,hopefully to provide some important clues for future studies of gas hydrate.展开更多
基金supported by Natural Science Foundation of China (91858208)National Key Basic Research and Development Program of China 2018YFC0310003 and 2017YFC0307704)+2 种基金Taishan scholar Special Experts Project (ts201712079)the Foundation of Key Laboratory of Marine Geology and Environment, Institute of Oceanology, CAS (MGE2017KG05)the Marine Geological Survey Program of China Geological Survey (DD20190819)
文摘Natural gas hydrates have been hailed as a new and promising unconventional alternative energy,especially as fossil fuels approach depletion,energy consumption soars,and fossil fuel prices rise,owing to their extensive distribution,abundance,and high fuel efficiency.Gas hydrate reservoirs are similar to a storage cupboard in the global carbon cycle,containing most of the world's methane and accounting for a third of Earth's mobile organic carbon.We investigated gas hydrate stability zone burial depths from the viewpoint of conditions associated with stable existence of gas hydrates,such as temperature,pressure,and heat flow,based on related data collected by the global drilling programs.Hydrate-related areas are estimated using various biological,geochemical and geophysical tools.Based on a series of previous investigations,we cover the history and status of gas hydrate exploration in the USA,Japan,South Korea,India,Germany,the polar areas,and China.Then,we review the current techniques for hydrate exploration in a global scale.Additionally,we briefly review existing techniques for recovering methane from gas hydrates,including thermal stimulation,depressurization,chemical injection,and CH4-CO2 exchange,as well as corresponding global field trials in Russia,Japan,United States,Canada and China.In particular,unlike diagenetic gas hydrates in coarse sandy sediments in Japan and gravel sediments in the United States and Canada,most gas hydrates in the northem South China Sea are non-diagenetic and exist in fine-grained sediments with a vein-like morphology.Therefore,especially in terms of the offshore production test in gas hydrate reservoirs in the Shenhu area in the north slope of the South China Sea,Chinese scientists have proposed two unprecedented techniques that have been verified during the field trials:solid fluidization and formation fluid extraction.Herein,we introduce the two production techniques,as well as the so-called"fbur-in-one"environmental monitoring system employed during the Shenhu production te
基金Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(51622603,51806027 and 51890911)the Major Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China(51436003)the National Key R&D Program of China(2017YFC0307300,2016YFC0304001)
文摘Natural gas hydrate(NGH)has been widely considered as an alternative form of energy with huge potential,due to its tremendous reserves,cleanness and high energy density.Several countries involving Japan,Canada,India and China have launched national projects on the exploration and exploitation of gas hydrate resources.At the beginning of this century,an early trial production of hydrate resources was carried out in Mallik permafrost region,Canada.Japan has conducted the first field test from marine hydrates in 2013,followed by another trial in 2017.China also made its first trial production from marine hydrate sediments in 2017.Yet the low production efficiency,ice/hydrate regeneration,and sand problems are still commonly encountered;the worldwide progress is far before commercialization.Up to now,many gas production techniques have been proposed,and a few of them have been adopted in the field production tests.Nevertheless,hardly any method appears really promising;each of them shows limitations at certain conditions.Therefore,further efforts should be made on the economic efficiency as well as sustainability and environmental impacts.In this paper,the investigations on NGH exploitation techniques are comprehensively reviewed,involving depressurization,thermal stimulation,chemical inhibitor injection,CO2–CH4 exchange,their combinations,and some novel techniques.The behavior of each method and its further potential in the field test are discussed.The advantages and limitations of laboratory studies are also analyzed.The work could give some guidance in the future formulation of exploitation scheme and evaluation of gas production behavior from hydrate reservoirs.
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(No.U1839208).
文摘Seismic and rock physics play important roles in gas hydrate exploration and production.To provide a clear cognition of the applications of geophysical methods on gas hydrate,this work presents a review of the seismic techniques,rock physics models,and production methods in gas hydrate exploration and exploitation.We first summarize the commonly used seismic techniques in identifying the gas hydrate formations and analyze the limitations and challenges of these techniques.Then,we outline the rock physics models linking the micro-scale physical properties and macro-scale seismic velocities of gas hydrate sediments,and generalize the common workflow,showing the frequently-used procedures of building models with detailed analysis of the potential uncertainties.Afterwards,we summarize the production techniques of gas hydrate and point out the problems regarding the petrophysical basis and abnormal seismic responses.In the end,considering the geological and engineering problems,we come up with several aspects of using geophysical techniques to solve the problems in gas hydrate exploration and production,hopefully to provide some important clues for future studies of gas hydrate.
