Dr. Dongliang Zhong, Professor, State Key Laboratory of Coal Mine Disaster Dynamics and Control, Chongqing University (CQU), China

Biography: Dr. Dongliang Zhong is Full Professor at State Key Laboratory of Coal Mine Disaster Dynamics and Control (CMDDC), Chongqing University, China. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in University of Shanghai for Science and Technology in 2008. He completed his Post-doctoral research at University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada in 2012, and joined CMDDC in the same year. He was promoted to full professor in Chongqing University in 2016. He performed collaborative research as a senior visiting professor at University of British Columbia (UBC) in 2018. He has published over SCI 30 papers in international journals and authored one book. He serves as a reviewer for over 20 international journals including Applied Energy, Energy, Fuel, etc. He is a principal investigator for 9 projects which are funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), Chongqing Science and Technology Bureau, etc. in recent 5 years.

Research Interest: Gas hydrates, recovery of unconventional natural gas, CO2 capture and sequestration, gas separation

Speech Title: Gas Hydrate Based Methane Recovery from Low-concentration Coalbed Methane

Abstract: Coalbed methane (CBM) is a primary type of unconventional natural gas adsorbed in coal seams. The amount is estimated to be 260×1012 m3 around the world. The low-concentration coalbed methane (LCCBM) with CH4 content less than 30 mol% is difficult to utilize because of its low combustion efficiency. Gas hydrate based gas separation is a promising technology for methane recovery from LCCBM. However, slow kinetics of hydrate formation and low CH4 recovery are two challenges limiting the development of this technology. This paper reports a study of enhancing hydrate formation and CH4 recovery by using thermodynamic additives, porous media, and nanoparticles, and then a two-stage gas hydrate based methane separation process is proposed and simulated using Aspen Hysys. The exergic loss of different equipment in the separation process is analyzed at various operating conditions. The economic evaluation of the two-stage separation process is conducted as well. The results indicate that the exergic efficiency of the purified gas increases with the increase of CH4 recovery but decreases with the increase of feed gas flow rate. The CH4-rich stream obtained from the two-stage separation process is profitable and can be directly supplied to natural gas networks.

Keywords: Gas hydrates, Coalbed Methane, Process Simulation, Exergic analysis