Electric field responses of different gas hydrate models excited by a horizontal electric dipole source with changing arrangements

The exploration of marine controlled source electromagnetic survey for gas hydrate generally consists of a dynamic horizontal electric dipole source towed in the sea water and a static receiver array allocated on the seafloor. In this paper, two orthogonal horizontal components of electric field excited by a horizontal electric dipole source upon one-dimensional horizontal-layered seafloor are calculated to study the effect of different arrangements and gas hydrate models on the response of electric field. There are several dominant factors determining the variation of induced field, including transmitting frequency of the source, distance between the source and the seafloor, water depth, thickness of the overburden layer, as well as physical and chemical structure of the gas hydrate model. Modeling results suggest that the amplitude of received electric fields can reach up to 10-16–10-10 V /(A·m2) by adjusting transmitting frequency; keeping the source being towed several tens of meters above the seafloor can improve the survey efficiency but not decrease the quality of collected data; deep water environment and shallow thin overburden layer are favorable for the survey because of their attribution to signal-to-noise ratio; the porosity and saturation of gas hydrate have significant influence on medium resistivity-the higher resistivity the medium has, the bigger the amplitude of electric field response will be. Forward modeling can provide valuable information for the development of instruments and the design of survey to detect gas hydrate.