Premium
Hydrate is a Nonwetting Phase in Porous Media
Author(s) -
Murphy Zachary W.,
DiCarlo David A.,
Flemings Peter B.,
Daigle Hugh
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2020gl089289
Subject(s) - hydrate , relative permeability , porous medium , saturation (graph theory) , permeability (electromagnetism) , clathrate hydrate , porosity , geology , mineralogy , materials science , geotechnical engineering , chemistry , membrane , biochemistry , mathematics , organic chemistry , combinatorics
In porous media containing gas hydrate, the hydrate morphology impacts the flow behavior of the fluid phases. We hypothesize that hydrate emplaces itself as a nonwetting phase and use this idea to describe relative permeability of water in a hydrate/water system. We perform steady‐state relative permeability measurements in hydrate‐bearing samples with a range of hydrate saturation. We measure and compare water relative permeability in the presence of gas and in the presence of hydrate and find that the water relative permeability is the same in both cases. This suggests that (1) relative permeability for hydrate systems can be obtained without performing difficult experiments on hydrate bearing sediments, (2) flow properties are porous‐media dependent, and (3) models that assume a fixed pore or tube geometry are inadequate.