Mengdi Pan

ERE Energy, Resources and the Environment

The 2019 Outstanding Student Poster and PICO (OSPP) Award is awarded to Mengdi Pan for the poster/PICO entitled:

Changes of Permeability as a Result of Hydrate Dissociation in Sand-Clay Sediment from Qilian Mountain Permafrost, China (Pan, M.; Wang, Y.; Mayanna, S.; Schleicher, A. M.; Spangenberg, E.; Schicks, J. M.; Li X.-S.)

Click here to download the poster/PICO file.

Mengdi Pan is a PhD student in the gas hydrate research group in Helmholtz Centre Potsdam German Research Centre for Geosciences, Germany. Her research focuses on the thermodynamic properties of mixed gas hydrates formed under conditions close to those at Qilian Mountain Permafrost in China and its formation/dissociation kinetics. In considering the influence of temperature, pressure, salinity, sediments and microorganisms on the hydrates, a series of experiments will be done to investigate the stability conditions as well as the formation/dissociation kinetics for the mixed gas hydrates.
Her poster presented at the EGU 2019 meeting investigates the changes of permeability during hydrate formation and dissociation processes in sand-silt core samples from Qilian Mountain Permafrost. An unexpected permeability decrease was observed after the dissociation of methane hydrate, which was explained as the influence of the released fresh water that causes an increase in the double layer thickness and repulsion forces between small particles leading to the release of these particles from the rock formation.