Gas Hydrates Workshop At ORNL:

Summary of ORNL's Gas Hydrates Workshop:  February 14, 2006 Schedule

The workshop was convened by Costas Tsouris with assistance from Megan Madden with the expressed goal of representing state-of-the-art gas hydrate research, informing the ORNL community of special capabilities and ongoing hydrate research conducted at the laboratory, and provided a platform for future collaborations.  The workshop was divided into three sessions:  two sessions of technical presentations and a third session reserved for discussions of research opportunities and program growth.

The first of the technical sessions focused on the experimental facilities available at ORNL and current research on hydrate materials. Claudia Rawn (UT/HTML) presented an overview of experimental facilities available to the hydrates community, most of which was funded by the LDRD program.  These include a low temperature powder XRD, a sapphire pressure cell designed for neutron diffraction experiments, as well as shipping and storage containers.  Hsin Wang  (HTML) described the thermophysical characterization tools which have been applied to gas hydrates at ORNL as well as the results of these measurements.  Michael Lance (HTML) presented Raman spectra of natural hydrate samples from the Gulf of Mexico as well as samples synthesized at ORNL and described a small pressure cell which can be used to synthesize and characterize hydrates in situ.  Konstantin Lokshin (UT) reported his results of a study examining the cage occupancies and structural features of H-clathrates using neutron diffraction at Los Alamos.  Bryan Chakoumakos (HFIR) presented a suite of neutron experiments examining the thermal expansion of synthetic hydrate materials as well as structural analyses of natural samples.  In the second group of presentations, Scott McCallum described the equipment available for hydrate experiments in the gas hydrate laboratory in ESD, focusing on the capabilities of the 72 liter Seafloor Process Simulator.

The remaining talks described emerging applications of gas hydrates in industry and planetary science.  Costas Tsouris (ESD/MSTD) presented research investigating the practicality of injecting dense CO2 hydrate composites at moderate ocean depths to sequester CO2 as well as ongoing work using gas hydrates to desalinize produced water.   Megan Madden (ESD) presented an overview of gas hydrates in planetary environments and described some research areas of current interest.

Following the technical presentations, Megan Madden and  Tommy Phelps (ESD) presented an overview of the recent FE peer review of methane hydrates research.  They gave a brief description of the research which is being conducted at other national laboratories as well as the research and funding goals of NETL, which manages the program.  A discussion of future funding prospects followed as well as informal discussions of potential collaborations concluded the workshop.