Journal of Cold Regions Engineering

Gas hydrates are inclusion compounds in which gas is trapped in ice. They are widely found in nature in permafrost and deep-sea sediments and hold huge potential as a methane gas resource. As a result, a National Methane Hydrate R&D program was launched in 2000 by the United States Department of Energy. One of the projects under the program, run by the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL/DOE DE-FC26-01NT41331), is to drill, core, and test one gas hydrate well in the Prudhoe Bay/Kuparuk River area of northern Alaska. In this project, cores are studied to gather field data on a hydrate reservoir in permafrost regions. Tests were required to develop coring techniques and handling procedures on frozen rocks prior to actual coring in Alaska. These tests were performed at a Houston research facility where frozen rocks were prepared using an apparatus fabricated to simulate hydrate reservoir in permafrost. The permafrost formation was simulated with a water-saturated sand pack, which was frozen using liquid nitrogen. Frozen rocks of up to 3.6 m (12 ft) high and 0.254 m (10 in.) diameter were prepared with the apparatus. The setup was designed and evaluated in several stages. First, a computer model was developed to understand the rock-freezing process. Then a prototype setup was constructed to have similar radial dimensions as the full-scale apparatus, but with a smaller height. Several experiments were performed to test the prototype and the full-scale apparatus. The apparatus has been successfully employed to prepare frozen rock, thereby assisting in development of improved coring methodology for Alaskan permafrost hydrates exploration.

In northern Alaska, the ground is largely underlain by permafrost. Many engineering problems in this region can be attributed to the variations of ground thermal regime. Engineering projects such as construction of gas pipelines must be based on a good understanding of ground thermal regime and its interaction with seasonal climate changes. Numerical modeling is used to simulate a multimedia system with transient heat transfer in this research. The system includes a snow cover on the top, a shallow lake in the middle, and soils beneath the lake. The finite-element method is used for the spatial domain solution, and the finite-difference method is used for the temporal domain solution. The model is applied to three sites in northern Alaska for a nine-month period during the winter of 1995–1996. The result reveals the impacts of thaw lake on the ground thermal regime, the formation of the talik, as well as the formation of ice in the lake. The model is verified against field observations. The difference between the simulated and observed ice thickness is less than 3%.