Modeling the Production of Natural Gas Hydrates
in Laboratory Conditions
Ján Siažik
1,*
, Milan Malcho
1
, and Stanislav Gavlas
1
1
Department of Power Engineering, Univerzitná 1, 010 26 Žilina, Slovakia
Abstract. Natural gas hydrates are in nature sources of primary energy.
They are possible to created in laboratory conditions also under certain
temperature and pressure conditions. With determining whether founding
suitable conditions is closely linked to the creation of a physical model.
The article deals with the model of natural gas hydrates.
1 Introduction
Energy storage is nowadays an interesting phenomenon that tends to move forward. There are
many options to store energy, for example water energy – construction of dams and pumping
tanks or capture of tidal wave energy. Also solar energy and its conversion to electrical
energy and storage in accumulators, etc. natural gas or methane reserves are stored in the
form of hydrates in nature. The hydrate can be produced also under laboratory conditions.
Accumulation of energy into the form of hydrate is of great importance in terms of storage
capacity, safety, transport to the place of consumption and coverage of unexpected energy
peaks in the technology industry. The hydrate is generally a substance comprising water and
hydrocarbons (or other gases). The storage of natural gas in hydrates (especially methane) is
particularly advantageous in terms of storage capacity but also in terms of gas storage safety,
which is possible at higher temperatures and lower pressures compared to other storage
technologies. The natural gas hydrate is in a solid state, which accounts for about 85 % of
water and 15 % of the gas bound in the clathrate lattice. Hydrates also have some uncertainty
about ongoing research and their use as potential sources of income. The gas hydrate can be
a great source of energy that begins to be considered for natural gas supplies for the coming
decades. It is estimated that 99 % of the global stock of gas hydrates is present in marine
sediments under the corresponding temperature and pressure conditions prevailing in the top
ten to hundreds of meters of seabed, in sediments at depths of 300 m and up to 4000 m.
Hydrates also occur on continent, but only in areas of permafrost ie in long-term freezing
areas with temperature all year below 0 °C. Storing energy in a convenient form for safe
storage and its subsequent release is a current challenge in processes that use the need for
energy to accumulate. The use of methane hydrates in practice could be for example, ensuring
peak coverage in cogeneration electricity and heat generation by natural gas released from
hydrates [1-4]. In Figure 1 is a burning gas hydrate sample.
*
Corresponding author: jan.siazik@fstroj.uniza.sk
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution License 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
MATEC Web of Conferences 168, 07002 (2018) https://doi.org/10.1051/matecconf/201816807002
XXI. AEaNMiFMaE-2018