Measurement and modeling of the effective thermal conductivity for porous methane hydrate samples

The effective thermal conductivities of gas-saturated porous methane hydrates were measured by a single-sided transient plane source (TPS) technique and simulated by a generalized fractal model of porous media that based on self-similarity. The density of porous hydrate, measured by the volume of the sample in the experimental system, was used to evaluate the porosity of methane hydrate samples. The fractal model was based on Sierpinski carpet, a thermal-electrical analogy technique and one-dimensional heat flow assumption. Both the experimental and computational results show the effective thermal conductivity of methane hydrate decreases with the porosity increase. The porosity of 0.3 can reduce the thermal conductivity of the methane hydrate by 25%. By analysis of the experimental data and the simulative result, the optimized thermal conductivity of the zero-porosity methane hydrate is about 0.7 W m^?1 K^?1.