Professor Huen Lee from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering will receive the Life Achievement Award at the International Conference on Gas Hydrates (ICGH), which will be held from July 28 to August 1. Held every three years in different parts of the world, the ICGH brings together scientists and engineers studying gas hydrates. This year’s conference, which marks the 8th ICGH, is going to be held in Beijing, China.

 

Titled “Opportunity and Challenge – Development and Utilization of Gas Hydrates,” the 8th ICGH will address various topics of gas hydrates, including the fundamentals such as thermodynamics and kinetics, natural systems, energy, environmental effects; and flow assurance, which deals with prevention, remediation, and development of new technologies. The conference aims to show the significant role of gas hydrates in development of cutting-edge technology to satisfy the social and industrial requirements.

 

For many years, Professor Lee has focused on the chemical exchange between the carbon dioxide-containing mixture and natural gas hydrates. Revealing the limitations of such methods in natural gas production, he proposed a new mechanism to replace the carbon dioxide mixture with a gaseous mixture containing nitrogen and carbon dioxide gases. This method greatly improved the current exchange means, thereby allowing much higher production rate of natural gas.

 

The carbon dioxide and nitrogen gas mixture was first tested at the field trial in North Slope, Alaska in 2012 with ConocoPhilips, an American multinational energy corporation. This test proved that the mixture can remarkably enhance the production of natural gas without dissociating natural gas hydrate layer and using harmful flue gases as the source of nitrogen and carbon dioxide. This indicated that the method can be applied for a more economic and eco-friendly production of natural gas.