Gas-hydrate Imaging Using X-ray Computed Tomography

Timothy J. Kneafsey, Barry Freifeld, Liviu Tomutsa, and Jacob Pruess

Contact: Timothy J. Kneafsey, 510/486-4414, TJKneafsey@lbl.gov

Research Objectives
Gas hydrates are ice-like crystalline solids formed from a mixture of water and natural gas at high pressures and temperatures near freezing. They are abundant in deep oceans and underlie vast stretches of permafrost. There is general scientific agreement that naturally occurring hydrates contain significantly more energy than is stored in traditional fossil fuel reserves. While gas-hydrate dissociation (the process of hydrate separating to gas and water or ice) is well understood, there is very little known about hydrate behavior in oceanic sediments or porous media. Our objective was to develop a technique capable of observing gas-hydrate dissociation in oceanic sediments or porous media, so that we may eventually extract the natural gas as an economic resource.

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