Analysis of factors affecting methane hydrate formation and degree of influence in oil-gas-water systems

Clarifying the role of different influencing factors on hydrate formation in the reactor and the macroscopic morphological changes helps understand the characteristics of hydrate formation. Determining the degree of influence factors aids in experimental design. Accordingly, single-factor and orthogonal experiments were carried out to investigate the effects of temperature, pressure, stirring rate, and water content on hydrate growth. The results revealed that pressure, stirring rate, and water content positively correlated with gas consumption, and temperature negatively correlated with gas consumption. The gas consumption increased by 85.00% when the pressure was elevated from 5.0 MPa to 8.0 MPa. The stirring rate was increased from 300 to 900 rpm, resulting in a 128.12% increase in gas consumption. When the water content increased from 60 vol% to 90 vol%, the gas consumption exhibited a significant increase of 78.68%. The temperature variation in water bath control exhibits low sensitivity to gas consumption. In addition, the influencing factors on the degree of gas consumption were in the order of pressure > water content > stirring rate > water bath temperature. This study can serve as a reference for determining the initial temperature, pressure, and stirring rate parameters in hydrate formation experiments under high-water-content conditions.