High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Clathrate hydrates (or gas clathrates, gas hydrates, clathrates, hydrates, etc.) are crystalline water-based solids physically resembling ice, in which small non polar molecules (typically gases) are trapped inside "cages" of hydrogen bonded water molecules. In other words, clathrate hydrates are clathrate compounds in which the host molecule is water and the guest molecule is typically a gas. Without the support of the trapped molecules, the lattice structure of hydrate clathrates would collapse into conventional ice crystal structure or liquid water.