Tsutomu Yamaguchi

Methane hydrate is anticipated to be a promising energy resource. It is essential to consider the mechanical properties of a methane hydrate reservoir to ensure sustainable production, since its mechanical behavior may affect the integrity of the production well, the occurrence of geohazards, and gas productivity. In particular, the creep property of methane-hydrate-bearing sediment is thought to have great significance in the long-term prediction of the mechanical behaviors of a reservoir. In earlier studies, triaxial compression tests were conducted on artificial methane-hydrate-bearing Toyoura sand under three axial-loading conditions, i.e., constant-strain-rate test, constant-stress-rate test, and creep (constant-stress) test. In this paper, the time-dependent properties of the methane-hydrate-bearing Toyoura sand observed in these tests were quantitatively discussed and found to be almost in agreement. The creep life obtained from the creep tests had a reasonably strong correlation with the loading-rate dependencies of strength, obtained from the constant-strain-rate tests and constant-stress-rate tests based on a simple hypothesis. The findings are expected to be used to develop a constitutive model considering the time-dependent behaviors of hydrate-bearing soil in future studies, and to improve the reliability of long-term prediction of the geomechanical response to gas extraction from a reservoir.

This paper proposes an innovative CO₂ enrichment system for crop production under a controlled greenhouse environment by means of tetra-n-butylammonium bromide (TBAB) + CO₂ semi-clathrate hydrate (SC). In this system, CO₂ is captured directly from exhaust gas from a combustion heater at night, which can be used for stimulating photosynthesis of crops in greenhouses during daytime. Although the gas capacity of TBAB + CO₂ SC is less than that of CO₂ gas hydrate, it is shown that TBAB + CO₂ SC can store CO₂ for CO₂ enrichment in crop production even under moderate pressure conditions (<1.0 MPa) at 283 K.

A constitutive model for marine sediments containing natural gas hydrate is essential for the simulation of the geomechanical response to gas extraction from a gas-hydrate reservoir. In this study, the triaxial compressive properties of artificial methane-hydrate-bearing sediment samples reported in an earlier work were analyzed to examine the applicability of a nonlinear elastic constitutive model based on the Duncan-Chang model. The presented model considered the dependences of the mechanical properties on methane hydrate saturation and effective confining pressure. Some parameters were decided depending on the type of sand forming a specimen. The behaviors of lateral strain versus axial strain were also formulated as a function of effective confining pressure. The constitutive model presented in this study will provide a basis for an elastic analysis of the geomechanical behaviors of the gas-hydrate reservoir in the future study, although it is currently available to a limited extent.