Investigation of methane gas bubble dynamics and hydrate film growth during hydrate formation using 4-D time-lapse synchrotron X-ray computed tomography

Khan, Shadman H.; Sahoo, Sourav Kumar ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9644-8878; Falcon-Suarez, Ismael Himar ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8576-5165; Marin-Moreno, Hector; Sutiyoso, Hanif; Madhusudhan, B. N.; Majumder, C. B.; Arora, Amit; Best, Angus I. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9558-4261. 2024 Investigation of methane gas bubble dynamics and hydrate film growth during hydrate formation using 4-D time-lapse synchrotron X-ray computed tomography. Frontiers in Earth Science, 12. https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2024.1438185

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Text © 2024 Khan, Sahoo, Falcon Suarez, Marin-Moreno, Sutyoso, Madhusudhan, Majumder, Arora and Best. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. feart-12-1438185.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Download (40MB) | Preview

Abstract/Summary

We present a time-lapse 4-D high-resolution synchrotron imaging study of the morphological evolution of methane gas bubbles and hydrate film growth on these bubbles. Methane gas and partially water-saturated sand were used to form hydrate with a maximum hydrate saturation of 60%. We investigated the transient evolution of gas bubble size distribution during hydrate formation and observed three distinct stages: a) nucleation and hydrate film formation, b) rapid bubble break-up, c) gas bubble coalescence and hydrate framework formation. Our results show that the average gas bubble size distribution decreases from 34.17 µm (during hydrate nucleation) to 8.87 µm (during secondary bubble formation). The small-size methane bubble population (mean diameter below 10 µm) initially increases at the expense of the larger methane bubble population (mean diameter above 50 µm) due to breakage of the larger bubbles and coalescence of the smaller bubbles. We quantified that the average hydrate film thickness increases from 3.51 to 14.7 µm by tracking the evolution of a particular gas bubble. This thickness increase agrees with an analytical model with an average deviation error of 3.3%. This study provides insights into gas bubble distribution and hydrate film growth during hydrate formation, both of which impact the geophysical and mechanical properties of hydrate-bearing sediments.

Item Type:	Publication - Article
Digital Object Identifier (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2024.1438185
ISSN:	2296-6463
Additional Keywords:	hydrate film, XRCT, hydrate formation, methane hydrate, gas bubble dynamics
Date made live:	22 Aug 2024 09:59 +0 (UTC)
URI:	https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/537898

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