Rapid methane hydrate formation to develop a cost effective large scale energy storage system

Abstract Natural gas (NG) is the cleanest burning fossil fuel and its usage can significantly reduce CO 2 emissions from power plants. With its widespread use, there is an ever increasing need to develop technologies to store NG on a large scale. NG storage via clathrate hydrates is the best option for a large scale storage system because of its non-explosive nature, mild storage conditions, high volumetric capacity and being an environmentally benign process. In this work, we demonstrate a new method to achieve rapid methane hydrate formation in an unstirred tank reactor configuration (UTR) at moderate temperature and pressure conditions employing tetrahydrofuran (THF) as a promoter. For the first time, THF is reported to act both as a thermodynamic and an excellent kinetic promoter for methane hydrate formation. We demonstrate a multi-scale experimental validation of our method to a volumetric sample scale-up factor of 120 and internal reactor diameter scale-up factor of 10. Further, new insights on the dissociation behavior of the hydrates are reported. There is a competitive edge for storing NG via clathrate hydrates compared to compressed natural gas storage both in terms of cost and safety.