Prospects of natural gas storage and transportation using hydrate technology in China

Natural gas is becoming a main source of town gas in China. It is difficult to supply natural gas by pipelines from gas fields to every city in China. To solve the problem, natural gas hydrate (NGH) technology is introduced in this paper. At the same time, NGH technology is compared with liquefied natural gas (LNG) technology and compressed natural gas (CNG) technology. We conclude that NGH technology has many particular advantages, such as moderate conditions of production and storage, simple technology and high security. A domestic NGH gas supply chain is proposed including the production of NGH, the road transportation of NGH, the regasification of NGH and the gas distribution. In addition, a cost analysis of NGH gas supply chain is made compared with LNG gas supply chain. The result shows that the gas supply technology via NGH is more cost effective and has powerful competitive in China. Considering the technical advantages and the economic efficiency of NGH technology, we conclude that it has a bright application prospect in China and put forwards some suggestions on realizing the commercial application of NGH technology.