Investigation of CO2hydrate generation characteristics based on the development of a power generation system using atmospheric heat

Abstract

This research aims at the development of a power generation system with low environmental load using the dissociation and expansion characteristics of CO2hydrate. The proposed power generation system drives the actuator by making use of large pressure difference in the generation and dissociation reaction of CO2hydrate caused by small temperature difference of several tens of degrees. In this study, CO2hydrate generation and dissociation tests are carried out using reaction vessels with different thermal conductivity, and the C02 hydrate generation characteristics are compared by examining the CO2hydrate generation amounts. In addition, an increase in the power generation amount of the proposed system is analyzed. Experiments were conducted to examine the production experiment of CO2hydrate to measure the amount of CO2hydrate production and experiments simulating the proposed system using reaction vessels and buffer tanks. A stainless steel cylindrical device (thermal conductivity 20.9 W/(m·K)) and a copper cylindrical device (thermal conductivity 402 W/(m·K)) were used for the reaction vessel. By using two reaction vessels, we investigate the amount of CO2hydrate produced and the efficiency of dissociation due to the difference in thermal conductivity. As a result of the survey, it was confirmed that increasing the thermal conductivity of the reaction vessel increases the CO2hydrate production by about 67% and the CO2 hydrate dissociation efficiency increases by about 1 %. Therefore, as one method to increase the power generation amount of the proposed power generation system, it is possible to increase the thermal conductivity of the reaction vessel.