For the early success of practical application of frontier energy resources

Developing efficient method of gas production from MH layer

Methane hydrate (MH), which exists beneath the sea floor around our country, is expected to become the next-coming energy resource. The estimated amount of methane gas resource in the methane hydrate reservoir in the area of Tokai-oki to Kumano-nada, reaches to 1.1 trillion m3 (equivalent amount of consumption of gas resource for 13 years in Japan). I am now in charge of the project leader of MH21 Research Consortium (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry), and carrying out researches to realize the early commercialization of MH resource. My Research topics are, developing process to separate methane from methane hydrate by injecting nitrogen and carbon dioxide, simulating hydrate dissociation and evaluating and predicting the gas production behavior, and also, economic evaluations of gas production.

Developing MH reservoir simulator

We are collaborating with National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, and developing a methane hydrate (MH) reservoir simulator (MH21-HYDRES), which we are aiming to commercialize in the future. This is one of the few simulators which can predict the gas production behavior from the MH layer, and this simulator is now used for MH gas production test analysis in the real MH field, and also is used for predicting gas production behavior for doing economic evaluation of MH development in the sea around our country.

Modeling heat transfer and fluid dynamics in porous medium

We are carrying out research of modeling heat transfer and fluid dynamics in porous media which is related to fluid energy resource development. Both by experimental approach and numerical approach, we are now modeling two-phase flow (gas and water) which causes hydrate dissociation in porous media, and also modeling phase behavior of multi-phase component under high pressure and low temperature environment.