Analytical modeling of methane hydrate dissociation under thermal stimulation

Abstract

In this study, a one-dimensional analytical model to describe heat and mass transfer during methane hydrate dissociation under thermal stimulation in porous media has been developed. The model is based on a similarity solution that considers a moving dissociation boundary which separates the dissociated zone containing produced gas and water from the un-dissociated zone containing only methane hydrate. The results of temperature distribution, pressure distribution, energy efficiency, and parametric study considering various initial and boundary conditions as well as various reservoir properties are presented and compared with previous studies. Sensitivity analysis of gas production on reservoir properties is also presented in this paper. The dissociation boundary moves faster by increasing the heat source temperature while decreasing the heat source pressure simultaneously, but the associated energy efficiency decreases. Increasing the well thickness has a negative effect on the energy efficiency of the process. Among the proposed thermal properties of the system, only the thermal diffusivities and conductivites of the reservoir as well as the porosity of the sediment affect the dissociation. The main contribution of this work is investigating analytically the hydrate dissociation using thermal stimulation by taking into account the effect of wellbore thickness and structure.