NETL, Consortium Complete Landmark Gas Hydrates Drilling Expedition

	The research consortium used the Helix drill rig Q4000 to conduct a landmark gas hydrates drilling expedition that demonstrated the occurrence of gas hydrates at high saturations in the Gulf of Mexico.

NETL, in collaboration with an industry research consortium, on May 6 completed a landmark gas hydrates drilling expedition that demonstrated the occurrence of gas hydrates at high saturations in reservoir quality sands in the Gulf of Mexico.

The industry research consortium was led by Chevron. Participants in the field program included the U.S. Geological Survey, the Minerals Management Service, the borehole research group at the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, and AOA geophysics.

The objective of the 21-day expedition was to confirm that gas hydrates occur at high saturations within reservoir quality sands in the Gulf of Mexico. This objective was fully met, with highly-saturated gas hydrate-bearing sands discovered in at least in two of three sites drilled.

The field program was led by NETL’s Dr. Ray Boswell and the USGS’s Dr. Timothy Collett. It was managed by Chevron’s Rana Roy and Dr. Emrys Jones. The program was completed on time, with zero safety incidents, and below the planned $11.2 million budget.

The results from this effort confirm the ideas that lay at the foundation of the DOE’s efforts to assess the resource potential of gas hydrates,” Dr. Boswell said.  “Gas hydrates were found at saturations ranging from 50% to more than 90% in high quality sands near the base of the gas hydrate stability zone.  The deposits were also found in close accordance with the projects pre-drill predictions, providing increased confidence that in our gas hydrate exploration and appraisal technologies.”

Gas hydrates are a unique substance comprised of natural gas (almost exclusively methane) in combination with water. Gas hydrates are known to exist in great abundance in nature and have profound implications as a potential energy source to meet for future energy needs. However, prior to this expedition, there was little documentation that gas hydrate occurred in resource-quality accumulations in the marine environment.

NETL Continues to Study Unique Carbon Dioxide Sorbent

	Ranjani Siriwardane (holding the patented sorbent) and Bob Stevens stand in front of the reactor system where the sorbent testing was conducted.

NETL researchers are studying a novel sorbent invented at NETL with high capacity for capturing carbon dioxide (CO₂).

Ranjani V. Siriwardane and Robert W. Stevens, Jr., describe studies of the sorbent in a paper accepted for publication in Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Journal.

The sorbent consists of magnesium hydroxide. It was developed for carbon dioxide capture at 200–315 °C. It is suitable for CO₂ capture applications such as coal gasification systems.

This is a unique warm gas temperature CO₂ removal sorbent since the regeneration temperature is significantly lower than previously reported. Both experimental data and thermo-dynamic analysis data showed that the sorbent is regenerable at 375 °C at high pressure and that steam does not affect the sorbent performance. High pressure regeneration is advantageous since the CO₂ compression cost required for sequestration can be reduced.

A multi-cycle test conducted in the high pressure fixed-bed flow reactor at 200 °C with 28% CO₂ showed stable reactivity during the cyclic tests.  The capture capacity also increased with increasing pressure.

NETL has received a U.S. patent for this research.

NETL, WVU Kick Off Project on Cooling Tower Optimization

Researchers from NETL and West Virginia University have initiated collaborative research and development efforts on cooling tower design and optimization for reducing the demands for freshwater by coal-fired power plants, while remaining in compliance with water-related environmental regulations.

The project team will develop high-fidelity, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models that simulate the fluid mechanics and thermal performance of cooling towers, including air/water flows, heat transfer, evaporation and condensation.

The cooling tower models will be used not only as stand-alone tools to analyze evaporative losses, but also as equipment models in power plant co-simulations developed using NETL’s Advanced Process Engineering Co-Simulator (APECS).

The project team will also generate fast reduced-order models to approximate the simulations with reasonable accuracy and provide a significant reduction in APECS process/CFD co-simulation times.  

NETL, Pitt Collaborate to Build World’s Only Test Rig of its Kind

A team of researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and NETL has completed design and construction of an aerothermal test rig capable of using superheated steam and/or carbon dioxide (CO₂) as the working fluid.

There is no other such facility in the global energy research community.

Technical information generated from this test rig will directly benefit the advancement of cooling technology for our nation's future fossil power generation systems, especially for those based on oxy-fuel cycles with turbine inlet temperature reaching the unprecedented level of 1750°C.

The rig has been through shakedown testing, and is being used to explore the heat transfer performance of advanced vortex generators in internal cooling passages for turbine airfoils.