Numerical modeling of hydrate formation in sand sediment simulating sub-seabed CO2 storage in the form of gas hydrate

Among several methods for CO2 capture and storage, we focus on CO2 sequestration in the form of gas hydrate under the seafloor, mainly for many sequestration sites offshore Japan and for little risk of CO2 leakage from the sediment. However, it is difficult to evaluate the precise storage potential and cost of this method due to the lack of the relevant information. Here, in order to do feasibility studies of this technique so as to make an effective storage method, we made a 3-dimentional gas water flow simulator with kinetic hydrate formation. The new design of CO2 hydrate formation in porous media under two-phase flow condition was implemented in this simulator, and unknown parameters in necessary mathematical models for gas-water flow in sand sediments were verified from the comparison between the results of the numerical simulations and the experimental measurements from the previous study. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.