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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Earth Sci.
Sec. Solid Earth Geophysics
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/feart.2024.1438185
This article is part of the Research Topic Experimental and Numerical Simulations of Rock Physics View all articles

Investigation of methane gas bubble dynamics and hydrate film growth during hydrate formation using 4-D time-lapse synchrotron X-ray computed tomography

Provisionally accepted
Sourav Sahoo Sourav Sahoo 1*Shadman Khan Shadman Khan 2Ismael H. Falcon Suarez Ismael H. Falcon Suarez 3Hector Marin-Moreno Hector Marin-Moreno 4Hanif Sutyoso Hanif Sutyoso 3B N. Madhusudhan B N. Madhusudhan 5Amit Arora Amit Arora 6C.B. Majumder C.B. Majumder 2Angus I. Best Angus I. Best 3
  • 1 Ocean BioGeosciences, National Oceanography Centre, University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom
  • 2 Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Roorkee, Uttarakhand, India
  • 3 National Oceanography Centre, University of Southampton, Southampton, England, United Kingdom
  • 4 School of Ocean and Earth Science, Faculty of Environmental and Life Sciences, University of Southampton, Southampton, Hampshire, United Kingdom
  • 5 Faculty of Engineering and the Environment, University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom
  • 6 Department of Chemical Engineering, National Institute of Technology Hamirpur, Hamirpur, India

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    We present a time-lapse 4-D high-resolution synchrotron imaging study of the morphological evolution of methane gas bubbles and hydrate film growth on these bubbles. Methane gas and partially water-saturated sand were used to form hydrate with a maximum hydrate saturation of 60%. We investigated the transient evolution of gas bubble size distribution during hydrate formation and observed three distinct stages: a) nucleation and hydrate film formation, b) rapid bubble break-up, c) gas bubble coalescence and hydrate framework formation. Our results show that the average gas bubble size distribution decreases from 34.17µm (during hydrate nucleation) to 8.87 µm (during secondary bubble formation). The small-size methane bubble population (mean diameter below 10 µm) initially increases at the expense of the larger methane bubble population (mean diameter above 50 µm) due to breakage of the larger bubbles and coalescence of the smaller bubbles. We quantified that the average hydrate film thickness increases from 3.51µm to 14.7µm by tracking the evolution of a particular gas bubble. This thickness increase agrees with an analytical model with an average deviation error of 3.3%.This study provides insights into gas bubble distribution and hydrate film growth during hydrate formation, both of which impact the geophysical and mechanical properties of hydratebearing sediments.

    Keywords: Hydrate film, XRCT, Hydrate formation, methane hydrate, gas bubble dynamics

    Received: 25 May 2024; Accepted: 29 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Sahoo, Khan, Falcon Suarez, Marin-Moreno, Sutyoso, Madhusudhan, Arora, Majumder and Best. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Sourav Sahoo, Ocean BioGeosciences, National Oceanography Centre, University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom

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