Effect of Cage Occupancy on Stability and Decomposition of Methane Hydrate.

Gas hydrates usually contain a certain number of empty cages that will both affect the hydrate stability and reduce the gas storage capacity. In this work, by MD simulations, we found that the hydrate stability is related to the cage occupancy, the empty cage types, and especially the distribution of empty cages. With the decrease of overall occupancy, the stability of hydrate becomes worse.