Phillip Szymcek

A Novel Continuous-Flow Reactor for Gas Hydrate Production

Potential applications of gas hydrates, including carbon dioxide sequestration in the deep ocean, coal bed methane–produced water treatment, storage and transportation of natural gas, and gas separations, are based on continuous, large-scale production of gas hydrates. A novel three-phase injector/reactor was developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory for the continuous synthesis of gas hydrates. The reactor receives water and a hydrate-forming species and rapidly forms hydrate with a residence time of a few seconds. The reactor was designed to maximize interfacial area between reactants, thus minimizing mass transfer barriers and thermal effects that negatively affect conversion of reactants into hydrate. The cohesiveness and the density of the hydrate product desired for specific applications can be controlled by slight variations in the geometry of an exchangeable internal piece of the reactor, the choice of the guest gas, and by the regulation of operating parameters such as pressure, temperature, reactant ratios, and degree of emulsification. In general, spraying one reactant into the other, within the jet-break up regime, results in the highest conversions. The reactor has been field tested for ocean carbon sequestration and in the laboratory for coal-bed methane produced-water treatment using liquid carbon dioxide. In this paper, the application of the reactor for ocean carbon sequestration will be discussed.