Experimental Study on Mechanism of Depressurizing Dissociation of Methane Hydrate under Saturated Pore Fluid

Sediment-hosted hydrate reservoir often contains saturated pore fluid, which changes the heat transfer and mass transfer characteristics of the hydrate reservoir. The exploitation of hydrate under saturated pore fluid using depressurization is simulated experimentally to investigate the influence of particle size of porous media, dissociation temperature, pressure drop and injected fluid type on gas production behavior. Homogeneous methane hydrate was firstly formed in frozen quartz sand. With the formed hydrate sample, hydrate dissociation experiments by depressurization were conducted. The test results showed that the gas production rate of hydrate under saturated pore fluid was substantially influenced by the particle size, the pressure drop and the injected fluid type, while it was influenced little by the dissociation temperature. The hydrate dissociates faster under larger pressure drop and in the presence of smaller porous media within the experimental region. The dissociation rate increases with an increasing fluid salinity in the initial stage, while it decreases in the later stage. The increase of gas diffusion resistance resulted from ionic hydration atmosphere in saturated chloride solution impeded the dissociation of hydrate. It can be solved by increasing the pressure drop and decreasing the fluid salinity in the process of gas recovery from hydrate reservoir.

Interstitial fluid flow:simulation of mechanical environment of cells in the interosseous membrane

In vitro experiments have shown that subtle fluid flow environment plays a significant role in living biological tissues, while there is no in vivo practical dynamical measurement of the interstitial fluid flow velocity. On the basis of a new finding that capillaries and collagen fibrils in the interosseous membrane form a parallel array, we set up a porous media model simulating the flow field with FLUENT software, studied the shear stress on interstitial cells＇ surface due to the interstitial fluid flow, and analyzed the effect of flow on protein space distribution around the ceils. The numerical simulation results show that the parallel nature of capillaries could lead to directional interstitial fluid flow in the direction of capillaries. Interstitial fluid flow would induce shear stress on the membrane of interstitial cells, up to 30 Pa or so, which reaches or exceeds the threshold values of cells＇ biological response observed in vitro. Interstitial fluid flow would induce nonuniform spacial distribution of secretion protein of mast cells. Shear tress on cells could be affected by capillary parameters such as the distance between the adjacent capillaries, blood pressure and the permeability coefficient of capillary＇s wall. The interstitial pressure and the interstitial porosity could also affect the shear stress on cells. In conclusion, numerical simulation provides an effective way for in vivo dynamic interstitial velocity research, helps to set up the vivid subtle interstitial flow environment of cells, and is beneficial to understanding the physiological functions of interstitial fluid flow.

Multi-transmitting formula for attenuating waves

The MTF is extended to case of attenuating incident wave by introducing an attenuation coefficient. The reflection coefficients of this modified MTF and MTF are evaluated and compared when an attenuating wave impinges on the boundary, and the results demonstrate that MTF can be used to absorb slightly attenuating waves and the modified MTF is more capable of absorbing heavily attenuating waves than MTF. The accuracy of modified MTF is also tested by numerical examples of fluid saturated porous media.

Numerical experiments for the conductive properties of saturated rock

The reservoir evaluation as a key technology in oil exploration and production is based on the electrical transport property (ETP) of saturated rock that is described in a mathematical form with Arhcie’s equa-tion. But there have been increasing cases observed in many researches indicating that the ETP is non-Archie especially for the complex reservoir with low porosity and permeability. In this paper,the numerical experiments based on the Lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) have been employed to study the effect of porous structure and fluids on the ETP for revealing the nature of non-Archie phenomenon in micro-scale. The results of numerical experiments have proved that the saturation exponent n is a function of water saturation and porosity instead of being a constant in Archie’s equation. And then,a new formula has been developed for the EPT through combining the result of numerical simulation with that of laboratory measurements. The calculations from the new formula show very good agreement with laboratory measurements to demonstrate the efficiency of the new formula over the conventional methods in non-Archie rock.