Simulación de la producción proveniente de las acumulaciones de hidratos de gas

Gas hydrates represent a potentially enormous source of natural gas, mainly methane in the 21st century, assuming the technology can be developed for commercial gas production from this kind of reservoir. To exploit this non-conventional gas reservoir suitable mathematical models to predict gas production are necessary. During the last two decades, more than ten models including analytical or numerical modeling have been used to represent the transformation of solid gas hydrates to gas and water. The different techniques studied for decomposing gas hydrates by modeling are mainly depressurization and thermal stimulation through steam injection into the gas hydrate reservoir. The present work shows the results obtained by the analysis and evaluation of the commercial numerical reservoir simulator used for gas production modeling of hydrate accumulations by two mechanisms; (a) depressurization, and (b) thermal stimulation. Firstly, an experimental one-dimensional model was built and analyzed, the model attempts to represent the experimental conditions referred in the literature, where the production mechanism is based on isothermal depressurization. The second part was to build a threedimensional model; it represented a conceptual model to evaluate the tool in order to consider the process of mass and heat transference during gas hydrate dissociation either by depressurization and/or thermal injection. The results obtained showed that it is feasible to represent these two processes.