Abstract:
Natural gas hydrate, as an enormous carbon reservoir, is mainly embedded in subsurface marine sediments. A large amount of hydrocarbons may release from the marine regions where gas hydrate deposits occur. Anaerobic or aerobic oxidation of dissociated hydrocarbon gas in its upward migration may cause hydrocarbon consumption thus decrease the carbon emission to atmosphere. Here, we performed experimental measurements on the aerobic oxidation process using marine sediments containing aerobic hydrocarbon-oxidizing bacteria to simulate the process of aerobic biodegradation for hydrocarbons (C
1+C
2+C
3) that decomposed from gas hydrate. The results show that the composition of methane, ethane and propane decreases together with carbon and hydrogen isotope fractionation during the aerobic consumption. An apparent preference for C
1 over C
2 and C
3 is observed during oxidation. The rates of oxidation are also in an order of C
1>C
2>C
3. At the same time, the carbon and hydrogen isotope of hydrocarbons show a various enrichment tendency. The enrichment amount of carbon isotope of C
1, C
2 and C
3 are 71.05‰, 12.03‰ and 4.61‰, and the average of ε
C are -11.219‰, -2.951‰ and -1.539‰, respectively. The accumulation amount of hydrogen isotope are 368.64‰, 156.00‰ and 111.97‰ for C
1, C
2 and C
3, as well as the average of ε
H are -56.092‰, -99.696‰ and -73.303‰ for C
1, C
2 and C
3 , respectively. The enrichment degree of carbon and hydrogen isotope fractionation are in an order of C
1>C
2>C
3 and C
2>C
3>C
1, respectively. Therefore, the aerobic biodegradation of hydrocarbons decomposed from gas hydrate may interfere with the origin discrimination of gas hydrate since the aerobic oxidation makes the composition and carbon and hydrogen isotope fractionation of hydrocarbon changed. Therefore, the influential factor should be considered appropriately to genesis study on gas hydrate when using decomposed hydrocarbons in headspace analysis.