Application of the monitoring and early warning system for internal solitary waves:Take the second natural gas hydrates production test in the South China Sea as an example

Internal solitary waves(ISWs) contain great energy and have the characteristics of emergency and concealment. To avoid their damage to offshore engineering, a new generation of monitoring and early warning system for ISWs was developed using technologies of double buoys monitoring, intelligent realtime data transmission, and automatic software identification. The system was applied to the second natural gas hydrates(NGHs) production test in the Shenhu Area, South China Sea(SCS) and successfully provided the early warning of ISWs for 173 days(from October 2019 to April 2020). The abrupt changes in the thrust force of the drilling platform under the attack of ISWs were consistent with the early warning information, proving the reliability of this system. A total of 93 ISWs were detected around the drilling platform. Most of them occurred during the spring tides in October–December 2019 and April 2020, while few of them occurred in winter. As suggested by the theoretical model, the full-depth structure of ISWs was a typical current profile of mode-1, and the velocities of wave-induced currents can reach 80 cm/s and30 cm/s, respectively, in the upper ocean and near the seabed. The ISWs may be primarily generated from the interactions between the topography and semidiurnal tides in the Luzon Strait, and then propagate westward to the drilling platform. This study could serve as an important reference for the early warning of ISWs for offshore engineering construction in the future.

Physical characteristics of high concentrated gas hydrate reservoir in the Shenhu production test area,South China Sea

High concentrated and heterogeneous distribution of gas hydrates have been identified in the gas hydrate production test region in the Shenhu area,South China Sea.The gas hydrate-bearing sediments with high saturation locate at two ridges of submarine canyon with different thickness and saturations just above the bottom simulating reflection.The crossplots of gamma ray,acoustic impedance(P-impedance)and porosity at four sites show that the sediments can be divided into the upper and lower layers at different depths,indicating different geotechnical reservoir properties.Therefore,the depositional environments and physical properties at two ridges are analyzed and compared to show the different characteristics of hydrate reservoir.High porosity,high P-wave velocity,and coarse grain size indicate better reservoir quality and higher energy depositional environment for gas hydrate at Sites W18 and W19 than those at Sites W11 and W17.Our interpretation is that the base of canyon deposits at Sites W18 and W19 characterized by upward-coarsening units may be turbidity sand layers,thus significantly improving the reservoir quality with increasing gas hydrate saturation.The shelf and slope sliding deposits compose of the fine-grained sediments at Sites W11 and W17.The gas hydrate production test sites were conducted at the ridge of W11 and W17,mainly because of the thicker and larger area of gas hydrate-bearing reservoirs than those at Sites W18 and W19.All the results provide useful insights for assessing reservoir quality in the Shenhu area.