The Effect of the Boundary Temperature on Natural Gas Hydrate Formation Process in a Closed Area

As a kind of potential and clean energy resource, natural gas hydrates have attracted wide attention from researchers. The technology of hydrate formation has important application in the field of hydrate exploitation, exploration and methane gas storage and transportation. In this paper, the Tough + Hydrate software was used to simulate the gas hydrate formation process in a laboratory scale closed cylinder. The effects of five kinds of boundary temperature on the hydrate formation process were investigated. The result shows that the formation rate of hydrate is faster in the earlier stage, and gradually slow down with time goes by, and finally tends to be stable. In addition, the drop rate of the reservoir pressure is significantly higher than the drop rate of the reservoir temperature. At the same time, the formation rate of hydrate and the mass of hydrate increase as the boundary temperature decreases.