• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.54-59
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• 2015

The gas hydrate of 10 trillion tons are buried under continental slope in the world(permafrost : 2%, marine continental slope: 98%), but technology for the the commercial gas recovery has not developed yet. There are normally four representative recovery methods: depressurization method, thermal stimulation method, inhibition injection method, and displacement method. This study focuses on change of dissociation time and gas production according to gas hydrate saturation rate and depressurization rate. It was found that the correlation between depressrization rate and dissociation time was like as $Y=0.0004X^2-0.499X+176.86$. It was also found that the bigger depressurization rate is, the better production is(methane gas is produced over 46.2% at depressurization rate 50% compared with 40%). However, on the contrary to this, it is presumed that gas production is decreased at 60% due to gas hydrate reformation.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2007.06a
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• pp.519-523
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• 2007

Gas(or methane) hydrates are solid solutions when water molecules are linked through hydrogen bonding and create host lattice cavities that can enclose a large variety of guest gas molecules. The natural gas hydrate crystal may exist at low temperature above the normal freezing point of water and high pressure greater than about 30 bars. A lot of quantities of natural gas hydrates exists in the earth and many production schemes are being studied. In the present investigation, depressurization method was considered to predict the production of gas and the simulation of the two phase flow - gas and water - in porous media is being carried out. The simulation show about the fluid flow in porous media have a variety of applications in industry. Results provide the appearance of gas and water production, the pressure profile, the saturation of gas/ water/ hydrates profiles and the location of the pressure front.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.19-30
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• 2021

The presence of the hydrate-bearing sediments in Ulleung Basin of South Korea has been confirmed from previous studies. Researches on gas production methods from the hydrate-bearing sediments have been conducted worldwide. As production mechanism is a complex phenomenon in which thermal, hydraulic, and mechanical phenomena occur simultaneously, it is difficult to accurately conduct the productivity and stability analysis of hydrate bearing sediments through lab-scale experiments. Thus, the importance of numerical analysis in evaluating gas productivity and stability of hydrate-bearing sediments has been emphasized. In this study, the numerical parametric analysis was conducted to investigate the effects of the bottom hole pressure and the depressurization rate on the gas productivity and stability of hydrate-bearing sediments during the depressurization method. The numerical analysis results confirmed that as the bottom hole pressure decreases, the productivity increases and the stability of sediments deteriorates. Meanwhile, it was shown that the depressurization rate did not largely affect the productivity and stability of the hydrate-bearing sediments. In addition, sensitivity analysis for gas productivity and stability of the sediments were conducted according to the depressurization rate in order to establish a production strategy that prevents sand production during gas production. As a result of the analysis, it was confirmed that controlling the depressurization rate from a low value to a high value is effective in securing the stability. Moreover, during gas production, the subsidence of sediments occurred near the production well, and ground heave occurred at the bottom of the production well due to the pressure gradient. From these results, it was concluded that both the productivity and stability analyses should be conducted in order to determine the bottom hole pressure when producing gas using the depressurization method. Additionally, the stress analysis of the production well, which is induced by the vertical displacements of sediments, should be evaluated.

• Journal of Aerospace System Engineering
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.8-15
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• 2017

In this paper, an equivalent brake hydraulic circuit with a piezoelectric hydraulic pump was constructed, and load pressure control for better pressurization/depressurization characteristics was conducted. To understand pressurization/depressurization characteristics of the equivalent hydraulic circuit, the relation between the load pressure and the input voltage was revealed experimentally. Experiments were also conducted to observe effect of the solenoid valve on depressurization characteristics. In the pressurization experiment, it was validated that transient response time required to achieve desired load pressure may be reduced through voltage control to change pressurization gradient. By applying the valve on/off time control and voltage control, it was also possible to reduce response time in the depressurization process. Therefore, transient response time may be improved within 10ms for pressurization and within 30 ms for depressurization using the control technique suggested in this study. The load pressure control method proposed in this study is useful for controlling load pressure of a hydraulic brake system with the piezoelectric hydraulic pump.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.133-140
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• 2009

This paper presents the experimental study to analyze the pressure and production behavior using depressurization and thermal methods in order to evaluate the hydrate productivity in the 2-D multi-well, plate-type apparatus which has 80 md permeability and 30% hydrate saturation. Injecting methane gas through multi-well allowed to set up the highly saturated hydrate system and combining two different sorts of sands made possible to build up the low permeability system. In this system, both depressurization and electric stimulation methods were applied. When operating pressure was low, according to the depressurization experiments results, the gas recovery was high, however strong pulses which appeared at initial stage of production would damage the operation system. Moreover, cases that hydrate reformed have occurred by endothermic reaction. We have conducted experiments four and six times for the depressurization magnitudes of 140 psi and 320 psi, respectively, to analyze production behavior for the method more in detail. For the cases that the depressurization magnitude was set as 140 psi, the unstable period appears in the results, but stabilized soon. In the experiment results for 320 psi the discontinuous and intermittent behavior has been observed. Thermal stimulation experiments was conducted with depressurizing 80 psi which is the case that shows stable behavior and low recovery. In the results, the gas recovery was high and the energy efficiency was low for long stimulating time. The energy efficiency and gas recovery increased for the soaking time of 1 minute after 2 minute-preheating. In the cases of which the soaking time exceeds 1 minute, energy loss by long soaking time caused low gas recovery and poor energy efficiency.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Systems Engineering
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.1-7
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• 2015

The purpose of this paper is to present the results of reengineering of the YGN 3&4 (Yonggwang Nuclear Power Plant, Units 3&4) SDS (Safety Depressurization System) retrofit design and to make recommendations for the improvement in design and design procedure implementing the Systems Engineering (SE) process. YGN 3&4 is a basic model for OPR1000 (the Korean standard 1000 MWe plant). The basic model, herein, represents the reference plant for the OPR1000 development. In the middle of the YGN 3&4 construction, the Korean Nuclear Regulatory Body requested a retrofit of this plant with a means to rapidly depressurize the plant in conformance with a severe accident mitigation requirement. For the reengineering of the SDS in YGN 3&4, V-model and functional and physical architectures have been developed. A SE decision making method has been used for the selection of SDS valves. Finally, recommendations have been made to improve OPR1000 design for the improved operation and enhanced safety.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2008.10a
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• pp.216-219
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• 2008

As a future clean substitute energy, the Gas hydrate development projects are world widely carried out to prepare the shortage of petroleum and natural gas resources. The OIIP of gas hydrate is estimated approximately 10 Trillion LNG equivalent ton and it reaches almost the amount of 5 thousand years use for the world people. To develop the commercial production technology, several research projects like Malik and Alaska project have been carried by several advanced countries and teams, but nobody have succeeded it yet due to the technical problems and the high risks. The technologies developed up to now for the hydrate production are categorized to four methods, such as depressurization method, thermal recovery method, inhibitor injection method and replacement method. As these methods are highly related to the costs and the environmental problems, many other researches including the safety, environment and disaster prevention are actively fulfilled as well.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.45 no.3
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• pp.304-309
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• 2007

In this study, the "Multi Well Plate-type cell Apparatus" was designed and setup for performing the producing experiments of methane hydrate by depressurization, heat stimulating methods. In order to characterizing the producing mechanism of hydrate through porous materials, the experiments for various producing methods have been conducted with the aid of the apparatus which has high permeability. In the experimental result of depressurization method, the pressure is temporarily increased unlikely conventional gas reservoir due to the sourcing effect of hydrate dissociation in the pore. Meanwhile, the temperature is decreased because of the endothermic reaction while hydrate is dissociated. In the experimental results of heat stimulating method, the dissociation in depressurization method is more slowly processed than that in thermal method, and hence, its gas production is lower. In the case of production right after heating, hydrate is dissociated only near injecting point and the permeability becomes greater at that area only. It infers that the more gas is produced during relatively earlier producing period. Since then, the hydrate is more slowly dissociated than the case of production after heating and soaking. This time, the performances of pressure and production obtained by thermal method have been analyzed in order to investigate the effect of soaking time on gas recovery. As a result, the gas recoveries in the case of 2 min and 4 min soaking are higher than case in 6 min soaking. This is reason that hydrate is reformed due to the decrease of temperature. It is expected that the experimental results obtained in this work may be more clearly explained by utilizing the lower permeable porous system with the greater hydrate saturation.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.47 no.3
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• pp.275-289
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• 2014

Recent scaled-up onshore and offshore field production tests revealed that the expectancy to produce gas from the gas hydrate deposits is gradually increasing, recognizing its potentials as one of the future energy resources. The total produced gas was approximately $480m^3$ by the hot water circulation method for 6 days' operation in Mallik 2002 project in Canada. In Mallik 2006-2008 project, the gas was successfully produced stably by the depressurization method for 6 days, up to $13,000m^3$ cumulatively. The depressurization method applied in the Mallik test was revealed as an effective way to produce gas from gas hydrates. The Alaska North Slope field trial in 2012 to inject mixed gas of $CO_2$ and $N_2$ to exchange $CH_4$ was successfully completed for the first time to produce maximum $1,270m^3$ per day. The remarkable achievement is that Japan has completed first offshore production test in the Eastern Nankai Trough, and produced approximately $120,000m^3$ of methane by the depressurization method for 6 days in March 2013. The technical challenges and uncertainties obtained from Nankai Trough production test give Korea more considerations in the aspects of well completion, reservoir formation and seafloor stability, sand control, flow assurance, and etc., due to the different geological environments and geomechnical properties in Ulleung Basin in Korea.

• KIEAE Journal
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.43-50
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• 2003

Nowdays the apartment is a main type of modernized residential buildings. According to the improvement of construction techniques and functions of windows and doors, recent apartments are enhanced air tightness of windows, doors and building envelopes. As Infiltration is decreased and natural ventilation is reduced, energy could be saved in winter. However, indoor air quality is bad. The air Infiltration of a building could be enlarged by physical actions, such as building designs, constructions and reduction of air tightness which is caused by aging. This research analyzes and measures with KNS-4000P (Sapporo air tightness measurement) the air tightness of the high rise apartments which is recently constructed and not occupied yet. With depressurization method, the KNS-4000 installed on the window and the indoor air-leakage was measured. At that time, Air come out from the edge of the windows and doors because of the pressure differences between indoor and outdoor. We measure the amount of the air as effective air leakage areas. This method of depressurization takes less time to measure than other methods and is less affected from other conditions. We measured infiltration of total 56 household, 29 households S apartment (total floor area : $64.42m^2$) in Balan and 29 households D apartment(total floor area : $78.21m^2$) in Chonan. As a result of the field measurements at October 2003, normalized leakage area of D apartment in Cheonan was $2.05cm^2/m^2{\sim}3.49cm^2/m^2$ (average: $2.77cm^2/m^2$) and normalized leakage area of S apartment in Balan is $1.23cm^2/m^2{\sim}1.68cm^2/m^2$ (average: $1.5cm^2/m^2$).