Storage capacity and vibration frequencies of guest molecules in CH4 and CO2 hydrates by first-principles calculations.

Using first-principle calculations at B97-D/6-311++G(2d,2p) level, we systematically explore the gas capacity of five standard water cavities (5(12), 4(3)5(6)6(3), 5(12)6(2), 5(12)6(4), and 5(12)6(8)) in clathrate hydrate and study the inclusion complexes to infer general trends in vibrational frequencies of guest molecules as a function of cage size and number of guest molecules. In addition, the Raman spectra of hydrates from CO2/CH4 gases are simulated. From our calculations, the maximum cage occupancy of the five considered cages (5(12), 4(3)5(6)6(3), 5(12)6(2), 5(12)6(4), and 5(12)6(8)) is one, one, two, three, and seven for both CH4 and CO2 guest molecules, respectively. Meanwhile, the optimum cage occupancy are one, one, one, two, and four for CO2 molecules and one, one, two, three, and five for CH4 molecules, respectively. Both the C-H stretching frequency of CH4 and the C-O stretching frequency of CO2 gradually decrease as size of the water cages increases. Meanwhile, the C-H stretching frequency gradually increases as the amount of CH4 molecules in the water cavity (e.g., 5(12)6(8)) increases.