The paper titled "Pore scale modeling on dissociation and transportation of methane hydrate in porous sediments" published in the scientific journal Energy was recently selected and reported as a key scientific article by Advances in Engineering (AIE), which is a leading source of significant and timely Engineering research news. Advances in Engineering is highly selective, the invited articles are less than 0.1% of the whole published literature (maximum 20 per week chosen by a team of advisers and experts).

Figure: Report page on AIE

Natural gas hydrate is a research hotspot in the world. The dissociation and transportation of mathane hydrate (MH) involve coupling of the multiphase flow, phase change, dynamic boundary, heat and mass transfer and kinetic reaction process in porous media. According to the article, researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Rock and Soil Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences: Professor Rui Song, Professor Jianjun Liu and Professor Chunhe Yang (CAS Member), together with Professor Shuyu Sun from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, proposed a novel method for modeling the mass and heat transfer in phase-change process and multiphase flow of MH dissociation in porous sediments.

This method combined the enthalpy-porosity technique and volume of fraction (VOF). The distribution of fluid saturation, temperature and velocity in the MH dissociation were comparatively analyzed. The model was validated by comparing the theoretical results with experimental and numerical results in the literature.

Both the normalized absolute permeability of the porous media and normalized permeability of water were obtained at different hydrate saturation during the dissociation process. Furthermore, the outcome would provide theoretical guide for the development of the natural gas hydrate in the sandy sediments.