A Monte Carlo simulation study of methane clathrate hydrates confined in slit-shaped pores

Monte Carlo simulations are used to study the structure, stability, and dissociation mechanisms of methane hydrate crystals inside carbon-like slit-shaped pores. The simulation conditions used mimic experimental studies of the dissociation of methane and propane hydrates in mesoporous silica gels (Handa, Y. P.; Stupin, D. J. Phys. Chem. 1992, 96, 8599). Simulations are performed under conditions of fixed methane pressure and fixed water loading, with the temperature increased in steps, with long equilibrations at each temperature. The initial structures of the confined hydrates are taken to be bulk-like, and pore widths chosen to accommodate integer or half-integer numbers of hydrate unit cells. Density profiles and orientational order parameter profiles are obtained and used to understand the structural changes associated with hydrate dissociation. Three different common water models, SPC/E, TIP4P, and TIP4P/2005, are used and the results compared. For water modeled using either the TIP4P or TIP4P/2005 potentials, dissociation temperatures are depressed proportionally to the inverse pore width, as predicted by the macroscopic Gibbs-Thomson equation. This behavior is observed for pores small enough that only half-cages of the clathrate structure are present. Experimental work has verified Gibbs-Thomson behavior for pores as small as 2 nm (Seshadri, K.; Wilder, J. W.; Smith, D. H. J. Phys. Chem. B 2001, 105, 2627); micropores of the size studied here have not yet been studied by experiment. Interestingly, the dissociation of hydrates modeled using the SPC/E water potential does not display the predicted pore-size dependence, and the dissociation mechanisms in this model seem to be quite different than those in the TIP4P-type models. In the SPC/E hydrates, with increasing temperature, cage dissocation occurs before methane desorption. In TIP4P-type hydrates, these processes occur either at the same temperature (to within the resolution of this study) or with dissociation occurring at higher temperatures than desorption. These simulations show that a variety of interesting clathrate structures and phase behaviors may be accessed in suitably designed microporous materials, with potentially useful applications in gas storage or separations.