Experimental Investigations into Gas Production Behaviors from Methane Hydrate with Different Methods in a Cubic Hydrate Simulator

In this work, the gas production behaviors of methane hydrate in porous media were investigated in the three-dimensional cubic hydrate simulator (CHS) with a single well using the different methods, depressurization (DP), regular huff and puff (HP),. huff and puff in conjunction with depressurization (HP-D), and huff and puff with no-soaking (HP-NS), at 281.15 K and hydrate saturation of 33.5%. The temperature spatial distributions and the hydrate spatial distributions in the hydrate reservoirs, the amount of gas and water produced, and the gas and water production rates in the gas production process were measured. In addition, the gas production efficiencies with the four methods were evaluated by calculating the gas recoveries, average production rates, thermal efficiencies, and energy efficiencies. It was found that HP-D is the optimal method for gas hydrate recovery.