Behavior of gas seep bubbles below the hydrate stability zone

Binbin Wang, University of Missouri, Columbia, United States, Inok Jun, Texas A&M University, Zachry Department of Civil Engineering, College Station, TX, United States, Katie Hutschenreuter, Texas A & M University College Station, College Station, TX, United States, Scott A Socolofsky, Texas A & M University, Zachry Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, College Station, United States, John D Kessler, University of Rochester, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Rochester, NY, United States, Andone C Lavery, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, United States, John A Breier Jr, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Edinburg, TX, United States and Jeffrey Seewald, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Department of Marine Chemistry & Geochemistry, Woods Hole, United States
Abstract:
Two research cruises (GISR G07 and G08) have been carried out during 2014-2015 to study the behavior of natural gas seep plumes escaping on the seafloor below the hydrate stability zone at MC 118 and GC 600 in the Gulf of Mexico. Quantitative image measurements suggest both temporal and spatial variation of the bubble size and gas flow rate. Hydrate formation on the natural gas seep bubbles was a very fast process in the deep sea environment (890 and 1200 m depth), where the measured methane concentration in water close to the source was also saturated. The measured rise velocities of the bubbles differed significantly from the predicted terminal velocities using empirical equations in Clift et al. (1978). The measured bubble characteristics (size distribution and flow rate) were provided as input to a bubble dissolution model, which accounts for the effect of hydrate on the mass transfer coefficient. The model shows results consistent with the measurements.
Back to: Physics, Chemistry, and Ecology of the Deep Gulf of Mexico following the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill I