Despite observations of massive methane release and geohazards associated with gas hydrate instability in nature, as well as ductile flow accompanying hydrate dissociation in artificial polycrystalline methane hydrates in the laboratory, the destabilising mechanisms of gas hydrates under deformation and their grain-boundary structures have not yet been elucidated at the molecular level. Here we...

Concerns about the potential effects of rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have stimulated interest in a number of carbon dioxide sequestration studies. One suggestion is the sequestration of carbon dioxide as clathrate hydrates by injection of carbon dioxide into methane hydrate. Energy-supply research estimates indicate that natural gas hydrates in arctic and sub-seafloor formatio...

Porous materials have provided us unprecedented opportunities to develop emerging technologies such as molecular storage systems and separation mechanisms. Pores have also been used as supports to contain gas hydrates for the application in gas treatments. Necessarily, an exact understanding of the properties of gas hydrates in confining pores is important. Here, we investigated the formation o...

Hydrates are technologically important and ubiquitous yet they remain a poorly understood and understudied class of molecular crystals. In this work, we attempt to rationalize propensity towards hydrate formation through crystallization studies of molecules that lack strong hydrogen-bond donor groups. A Cambridge Structural Database (CSD) survey indicates that the statistical occurrence of hydr...

Seismic analyses of methane hydrate data from the Blake Outer Ridge indicate high Pwave velocity and anomalously low S-wave velocity in sediments containing methane hydrates. In an attempt to explain this observed P-wave and S-wave velocity structure at the transition from gas to hydrates, the effect of different hydrate models on elastic moduli and velocities are explored. After construction o...

Hydrate phase equilibria for the binary CO2+water and CH4+water mixtures in silica gel pore of nominal diameters 6, 30, and 100 nm were measured and compared with the calculated results based on van der Waals and Platteeuw model. At a specific temperature, three-phase hydrate-water-vapor (HLV) equilibrium curves for pore hydrates were shifted to the higher-pressure condition depending on pore s...

Adhesion (cohesion) and agglomeration properties of gas hydrate particles have been a key to hydrate management in flow assurance in natural gas pipelines. Despite its importance, the relevant data in the area, such as the surface energy and the interfacial energy of gas hydrates with gas and/or water, are scarce; presumably due to the experimental difficulties involved in the measurements. Her...

Gas hydrates presented as form of segregated bodies have been observed on shallow subsurface sediments. However, most gas hydrate physics models describe that hydrates occur in pore space in deep subsurface sediment. A new model considers gas hydrate as segregated bodies to derive elastic properties of hydrates bearing sediments and gas hydrate saturation. The predicted elastic properties based...

Recent observations have evidenced traces of methane (CH4) heterogeneously distributed in the martian atmosphere. However, because the lifetime of CH4 in the atmosphere of Mars is estimated to be around 300–600 years on the basis of photochemistry, its release from a subsurface reservoir or an active primary source of methane have been invoked in the recent literature. Among the existing scenar...

We present 1–5 lm IR reflectance spectra of CO2 clathrate hydrates acquired under temperature and pressure conditions representative of the icy moons’ surfaces. The IR reflectance spectrum of the CO2 clathrate hydrates is similar to the water ice IR reflectance spectrum except for two main absorption bands corresponding to the CO2 guest molecule at 2.71 and 4.28 lm (3693 and 2334 cm!1). The spe...