Nitrogen-Driven Chromatographic Separation During Gas Injection Into Hydrate-Bearing Sediments

Darnell, K. N.; Flemings, P. B.; DiCarlo, D.

doi:10.1029/2018wr023414

Title: Nitrogen-Driven Chromatographic Separation During Gas Injection Into Hydrate-Bearing Sediments

Journal Article · 27 June 2019 · Water Resources Research

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1029/2018wr023414 · OSTI ID:1614157

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Univ. of Texas, Austin, TX (United States)

Hydrates are solid phases composed of water cages enclosing gas molecules that may host large quantities of recoverable natural gas and may serve to sequester CO₂ on geological time scales. Most hydrate studies focus on hydrates containing a single gas component, such as CH₄ or CO₂. Yet, there are several settings in which multiple components form hydrate mixtures, or mixed hydrates, including a subsurface injection technique that claims to simultaneously recover CH₄ and sequester CO₂ called “guest molecule exchange.” Here, we combine multicomponent phase behavior for hydrate-forming systems with a multiphase fluid flow simulator to understand the evolution of hydrate and nonhydrate phases during subsurface injection. We simulate various scenarios for systems composed of H₂O, CH₄, CO₂, and N₂. Our study probes the impact of injection composition, initial reservoir composition, and transport of each component through the model domain. We observe chromatographic separation from the combined effect of compositional partitioning in each phase, variable flow speed of each phase, and compositional dependence of phase stabilities. We show that N₂ drives chromatographic separation to create a CH₄-free zone and a CO₂-free zone that are connected by a continuous N₂-dominated vapor phase. While our results are theoretical and should be validated experimentally, they imply that guest molecule exchange acts as two sequential processes rather than as a simultaneous process. Furthermore, they show that injections into reservoirs with and without free water have vastly different behaviors, which has implications for the interpretation of the guest molecule exchange field test and various laboratory studies.

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Research Organization:: Univ. of Texas, Austin, TX (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Fossil Energy (FE)

Grant/Contract Number:: FE0010406

OSTI ID:: 1614157

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 1550673

Journal Information:: Water Resources Research, Vol. 55, Issue 8; ISSN 0043-1397

Publisher:: American Geophysical Union (AGU)Copyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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