Metastable state of gas hydrate during decomposition: A novel phenomenon

Natural gas hydrates are solid compounds with cage-like structures formed by gas and water.An intriguing phenomenon that gas hydrates can dissociate at a low rate below the ice freezing point has been viewed as the metastability of hydrate.The mechanisms of hydrate metastability have been widely studied,and many mechanisms were proposed involving the self-preservation effect,supercooled water-gas-hydrate metastable equilibrium,and supersaturated liquid-gas-hydrate system etc.The metastable state of hydrate could be of crucial significance in the kinetics of hydrate formation and decomposition,heat and mass transfer during gas production processes,and the application of hydrate-based technique involving desalination,energy storage and transportation,and gas separation and sequestration.Few researches have systematically considered this phenomenon,and its mechanism remains unclear.In this work,various mechanisms and hypothesis explaining the metastable state of gas hydrates were introduced and discussed.Further studies are still required to reveal the intrinsic nature of this metastable state of gas hydrate,and this work could give some implications on the existing theory and current status of relevant efforts.

Wave Pressure Acting on V-Shaped Floating Breakwater in Random Seas

Wave pressure on the wet surface of a V-shaped floating breakwater in random seas is investigated. Considering the diffraction effect, the unit velocity potential caused by the single regular waves around the breakwater is solved using the finite-depth Green function and boundary element method, in which the Green function is solved by integral method. The Response-Amplitude Operator(RAO) of wave pressure is acquired according to the Longuet-Higgins' wave model and the linear Bernoulli equation. Furthermore, the wave pressure's response spectrum is calculated according to the wave spectrum by discretizing the frequency domain. The wave pressure's characteristic value corresponding to certain cumulative probability is determined according to the Rayleigh distribution of wave heights. The numerical results and field test results are compared, which indicates that the wave pressure calculated in random seas agrees with that of field measurements. It is found that the bigger angle between legs will cause the bigger pressure response, while the increase in leg length does not influence the pressure significantly. The pressure at the side of head sea is larger than that of back waves. When the incident wave angle changes from 0? to 90?, the pressure at the side of back waves decreases clearly, while at the side of head sea, the situation is more complicated and there seems no obvious tendency. The concentration of wave energy around low frequency(long wavelength) will induce bigger wave pressure, and more attention should be paid to this situation for the structure safety.