An Experimental Study on the Heat Transfer Characteristics to Enhance the Artificial Hydrate Formation Performance

전열특성을 이용한 가스하이드레이트 인공제조 성능향상에 대한 실험적 연구

Gas hydrates are ice-like crystalline compounds that form under low temperature and elevated pressure conditions. Recently, gas hydrates present a novel means for natural gas storage and transportation with potential applications in a wide variety of areas. An important property of hydrates that makes them attractive for use in gas storage and transportation is their very high gas-to-sol id ratio. In addition to the high gas content, gas hydrates are remarkably stable. The main barrier to development of gas hydrate technology is the lack of an effective mass production method of gas hydrate in solid form. In this study, some performance comparison among several cases classified by different volume sizes of solution were carried to identify the characteristics due to the volume increment. And it is found that one of the main reasons disturbing hydrate formation is related to the lack of cooling heat transfer due to the volume increase of the solution. So, three kinds of heat transfer plates which have different shapes and cross sectional areas were made and tested for the performance comparison following to the shape and area of each plate. Finally it is clarified that the heat transfer is one of the major factors effecting hydrate formation performance and the installation of heat transfer plate can enhance the formation performance especially not in terms of the quantity but the speed.