3.3 Effects of hydrate saturation change on the sealing layer
formation process
In Cases 3, 4, 5, the inlet pressure increased as soon as the gas–water
flowed, indicating the hydrate–containing sealing layer formed at the
beginning. Thus, we investigated the effects of hydrate saturation
change on sealing layer by increasing seawater injection rate radio, the
experimental conditions of Cases 6 and 7 are shown in Table 4. When
seawater flow in hydrate reservoir was enhanced, the reservoir won’t
produce sealing effect during flow process. The gas–water process was
divided into two stages (see Fig. 10): in the first stages the
gas–water flow rate was 1–2 ml/min, in the second stage, the
gas–water flow rate was 2–0.5 ml/min in Case 5 and 4–1 ml/min in Case
6, respectively.
Table 4. Experimental conditions and results of Cases 6 and 7.