Compositional and Structural Identification of Natural Gas Hydrates Collected at Site 1249 on Ocean Drilling Program Leg 204

In contrast to the structural studies of laboratory-grown gas hydrate, this study has been performed on nat-urally grown clathrate hydrates from the sea flor. The PXRD pattern of natural gas hydrate shows that the samplehad a structure I hydrate. The 13C NMR spectrum was obtained for the natural gas hydrate sample in order to identifythe cage occupancy of guest molecules and determine the hydration number. The NMR spectrum reveal that the naturalgas hydrates used in this study contain only methane with no noticeable amount of other hydrocarbons. The existenceof two peaks at diferent chemical shifts indicates that methane molecules are encapsulated in both large and smallthe NMR results. Investigating the composition and structure of natural gas hydrates is essential for applying naturalgas hydrates as a novel energy source. KCI Citation Count: 20