Jitendra Sangwai

Energy is an essential commodity for the survival and socioeconomic development of the human race. The energy supply sector primarily comprises of industrial, commercial, and domestic applications. The foremost challenges faced by the energy supply sector are growing consumption levels, limited accessibility, environmental concerns, viz-a-viz, climate change, and pollution of water and air resources. As conventional resources of energy have started to decline and are expected to get exhausted by 2040, the main focus has been shifted to unconventional sources [1]. In this category, natural gas resources such as gas hydrate, shale gas, coal bed methane will provide tremendous potential for meeting the demand. Gas hydrates are ice-like crystalline substance formed by a framework of water and natural gas molecules. Recent exploration programs by various agencies such as United States Geological Survey (USGS), National Gas Hydrate Program (India), Japanese Methane Gas Hydrate R&D have proved that massive amount of gas hydrate deposits lying across marine settings and permafrost environments. Hydrate deposits are currently estimated to be 5 × 1015 m3 of methane gas [2]. If this untapped resource of energy becomes feasible for the economic production, it could increase natural gas reserves to multifold. Moreover, this would be considerably greater than the total amount of all fossil fuels together. As reported by USGS, gas hydrates hold more than 50% of the entire world’s carbon. It has been estimated that commercial production of methane from 15% of natural gas hydrate can fulfill the energy requirement of the entire world for next 200 years [3]. Hence, natural gas hydrates are considered to be the vital sustainable energy resource. Many pilot production tests have been completed and are underway to recover methane from gas hydrate deposit across the world [4]. Preliminary studies and pilot tests have shown promising results in terms of methane recovery from natural gas hydrates by employing methods such as thermal stimulation, depressurization, inhibitor injection. Ongoing gas hydrate research programs throughout the world and advances in technology will certainly help to cater any technical challenges in order to potentially harness the huge amount of energy stored in the form of natural gas hydrates.

Microorganisms play an important role in the formation of methane hydrate in subsea environment. Studies involving the effect of biosurfactants produced by microorganisms on methane hydrate formation kinetics are not well understood. The present work investigates the influence of cell free solution containing biosurfactant obtained during the cultivation of microorganisms on the formation kinetics of methane gas hydrate. Two microorganisms, viz., Pseudomonas aeruginosa CPCL and Bacillus subtilis YB7 have been used to produce biosurfactants namely, rhamnolipid and surfactin, respectively. The performance of the cell free solution containing various concentrations (200, 400, 600, 800 and 1000 ppm) of biosurfactant to form the methane gas hydrate was analyzed by adding it into the pure water system and compared with synthetic surfactant, sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS). It has been observed that the introduction of biosurfactant into pure water system improves the formation kinetics of methane hydrate and reduced the induction time. Addition of 200 ppm of rhamnolipid solution in pure water system has resulted in 47.3% of methane gas to hydrate conversion with an induction time of about 0.23 h, whereas pure water showed 45.1% conversion with an induction time of about 5.77 h. The same concentration of surfactin and SDS have resulted in 42.7 and 33.3% of methane gas to hydrate conversion, respectively. Biosurfactants studied here shows efficient and better performance than their chemical counterpart, namely SDS. This study also provides information on the optimum biosurfactant concentration for the improved formation kinetics of methane hydrate. The results suggest that the utilization of environment friendly biosurfactant can be used as an effective kinetic promoter for the methane hydrate formation suitable for optimum storage and transportation of natural gases.

In this work, the effects of Al2O3, SiO2, Ag and Cu nanoparticles on the kinetics of CO2CH4 hydrate formation process were experimentally studied by measuring the amount of gas consumed and the rate of gas consumption. A suspension of 0.1 wt%, 0.2 wt % and 0.3 wt% of each nanoparticle was injected into the hydrate formation reactor, while pressure and temperature were maintained at 4.0 MPa and 274.15 K, and the magnetic stirrer speed was set at 350 rpm. The CO2CH4 hydrate formation process was studied in both pure water and water containing a 0.1 wt%, 0.2 wt% and 0.3 wt% of each nanoparticle suspension. The results showed that these nanoparticles had a positive effect on hydrate formation. These effects varied from one nanoparticle to another. It was observed that nanoparticles of SiO2 had the most positive effect on CO2 gas consumption, particularly at a concentration of 0.3 wt%. At this concentration the average amount of gas consumed was about 45% higher than that in pure water during the dissolution and 77% during crystallization. Cu and Al2O3 nanoparticles had an intermediate effect with improvement in gas consumption by 1%-15% during dissolution; while it had an important impact on gas consumption during hydrate crystallization with an improvement of 30%-65%. Ag nanoparticles had no significant effect during these two phases.