Study on hydrocyclone used for natural gas hydrate mining

National Engineering Laboratory for Industrial Wastewater Treatment, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai, 200237, China

^* Corresponding author: tiwangqiang@163.com

Abstract

Nowadays, energy shortages and global environmental pollution problems are becoming increasingly prominent, and the exploration of clean and renewable energy has become an important direction of energy research. Natural gas hydrates have become the most promising alternative energy source in the future due to its advantages of high calorific value, small environmental hazards and abundant mineral deposits. About 99% of natural gas hydrates are stored in the seabed formation. In 2014, China proposed solid-state fluidized mining technology for marine natural gas hydrates. One of its key technologies is to remove sand from hydrates in real time and backfill the sand on the seabed. Therefore, a downhole axial hydrocyclone suitable for the exploitation of marine natural gas hydrates is proposed in this paper. The purpose of this study is to achieve real-time sand removal and backfilling of downhole hydrate mixed slurry, reduce the sand content of produced fluid, protect the seabed stratum structure, and at the same time reduce the energy consumption of pipeline transportation. In this study, the experimental method was used to evaluate the separation performance of the cyclone with a nominal diameter of 100 mm under different working conditions.