Methane Hydrate Formation and Dissociation in the Presence of Hollow Silica

A large number of natural gas hydrate deposits have been discovered worldwide so far, and the paramount interest is to evaluate them as an alternate source of energy. Further, the architecture of clathrate compounds finds many applications in gas separation, storage, and transportation processes. We examined methane hydrate (MH) formation/dissociation behavior in the presence of hollow silica grains in stirred and nonstirred reactor vessels and have observed an identical value for hydrate conversion. Thus, the stirring is avoidable in the process. Further, the results also show that the overall methane conversion in SiO2H2OCH4 has steadily increased, and the mole fraction of methane varies from 0.010 to 0.092 by varying the mole fraction of methane in the vapor phase in the range 0.017 to 0.283. Thereafter, the hydrate conversion is much slower even when the mole fraction in the vapor phase reached 0.647. The gas intake capacity in MH has not improved significantly at higher pressures (=4 MPa to 5 MPa) in the water-saturated silica system. The effect of the load factor (varying CH4 vapor phase mole fraction with the addition of CH4 gas at a fixed amount of water) is significant on MH, and the CH4 mole fraction in hydrates was 0.142.