Final Report for the September 2001 Workshop on Physical and Chemical Property Measurements for the Gas Hydrate R & D Community

摘要

A 2-day workshop 'Physical and Chemical Property Measurements for the Gas Hydrate R&D Community' was held on 17-18 September 2001. Putting together this workshop was a joint effort by LLNL, MBARI and the USGS, Menlo Park. Twenty-two people from a wide variety of institutions and backgrounds participated. The premise of the workshop was that progress in nearly every aspect of gas hydrate research depends fundamentally on the availability of high-quality property data and the development of laboratory insights into the physics and chemistry that govern gas hydrates in nature. After reviewing the current state of gas hydrate R&D with respect to property measurements, there was general agreement that it is time to move forward with new approaches (e.g., seafloor experiments, lab experiments with hydrate-sediment aggregates) and new applications of techniques (e.g., improved seismics, in situ x-ray and neutron diffraction and tomography, and NMR scanning). The workshop consensus is summarized at the end of this document in a table of fundamental questions pertaining to natural gas hydrates and possible experimental lab and seafloor approaches to answering them.