A Study on the Methane Hydrate Formation Using Natural Zeolite

Gas hydrate is formed by physical binding between water molecule and gas such as methane, ethane, propane, or carbon dioxide, etc., which is captured in the cavities of water molecule under the specific temperature and pressure. $1\;m^3$ hydrate of pure methane can be decomposed to the methane gas of $172\;m^3$ and water of $0.8\;m^3$ at standard condition. If this characteristic of hydrate is reversely utilized, natural gas is fixed into water in the form of hydrate solid. Therefore, the hydrate is considered to be a great way to transport and store of natural gas in large quantity. Especially the transportation cost is known to be 18~25% less than the liquefied transportation. However, when methane gas hydrate is artificially formed, its reaction time may be too long and the gas consumption in water becomes relatively low, because the reaction rate between water and gas is low. Therefore, for the practical purpose in the application, the present investigation focuses on the rapid production of hydrates and the increment of the amount of captured gas by adding zeolite into pure water. The results show that when the zeolite of 0.01 wt% was added to distilled water, the amount of captured gas during the formation of methane hydrate was about 4.5 times higher than that in distilled water, and the methane hydrate formation time decreased at the same subcooling temperature.

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