Experimental Study and Setup of Its Apparatus for the Formation of Hydrate in Porous Media

Since hydrate has been discovered on the earth, many numbers of experimental studies have been conducted for characterizing the fundamental properties of hydrates, such as equilibrium conditions, thermodynamic properties, structures, kinetics, etc. It is considered naturally occurred hydrates in porous rocks have a great potential as a future of unconventional energy resources, and the investigations of formation and dissociation of hydrates in porous media are required. In this study, an experimental apparatus was designed to perform experiments of hydrates in porous core. With the apparatus developed, firstly, isochoric experiments were conducted to find hydrate equilibrium conditions in porous media, and the results were compared with reference data to verify experimental apparatus and methods in this study. Secondly, experiment of formation was examined by observing the behaviors of pressure and electrical resistance and the effects of initial water saturation on formation were analysed.