The article explores the potential for modification of the well-known salt cavern leaching process for brine production or/and hydrocarbon or hydrogen storage facilities, enabling the acceleration of the pace of acquiring new storage capacities with their increased geomechanical stability. The innovative technology is based on the use of high-pressure water jet technique for disc niche cutting in salt rock. The effect of such operations is a significant increase in the contact area of the water with the rock during cavern leaching and faster concentrated brine recovery already in the first leaching phase. This aspect was tested in 67 tests performed for three different types of rock salt: green, pink, and Spiza salt. Laboratory tests of the successive cutting of niches with a stream of water at 500 bar were carried out. The effectiveness of water jet was demonstrated and the possibilities of effective cutting of niches. Significant relationships were found between the obtained depth of niches at a given stream pressure and the duration of individual operations. Depending on the type of salt, the rate of increase in their depth was determined. The presented test results precede the much larger upscaling project, currently at the preparatory stage.
For the storage of hydrocarbons, hydrogen, or other products, underground caverns left over from the exploitation of salt deposits, or made specifically for this purpose, are successfully used. This article analyses the effectiveness of currently used well-leaching technologies in terms of the possibility of increasing the speed of obtaining industrial brine, better control of the shape of the created cavern, and, as a result, a shorter production time. An innovative solution was proposed, which consisted of creating appropriate niches in the walls of the leach well using the high-pressure hydrojet technique, just before the start of the sump leaching. A series of numerical simulations of the technologies were performed for various combinations of niche locations along the well, determining the successive phases of the formation of the cavern space at individual stages and the brine concentration increments for the two assumed technology scenarios. As a result of the modified technology, the possibility of creating a sump with a volume greater than 17%, compared to the classical method carried out at the same time, was indicated. The resulting sump also had a better shape to partially eliminate the reduction in leaching efficiency due to the accumulation of insoluble matter at the bottom. In addition, the brine obtained according to the modified technology had a 15% higher concentration than in the classical method.
While constructing underground gas storages (UGS) in abandoned hard coal mines attention should be paid to the following elements:-physical phenomena accompanying gas storing, and their dynamics in time; -designing equipment and surface infrastructure of UGS, in that: configuration of collective and connecting gas pipelines, individual wellbore equipment, group equipment, injection systems worked out for methanol (or other drying agents), gas compression systems, systems for gas pressure measurement and regulation, gas streams and also plans of the wells, wellheads, as well as the systems for mine brine utilization and management; -current control of UGS in view of acquiring planned pump ability and reception of gas; verification of the amount of gas in the storage; -design and managing of underground gas storage, implementing, monitoring and iterative correction of the geological-reservoir model of the storage is a system of interconnected issues. None of the presented stages of the process is independent. Only together they constitute about the successful operation of the UGS. The basic factor conditioning the success in the build and exploitation of the storage is optimization. The process of deposit planning and management should be carefully worked out and cyclically updated depending on the dynamics of the changes of reservoir parameters or when additional important pieces of information are obtained. This report addresses the issue of the control of tightness of the rock mass around the gas storage place. The control can be efficient when the nature of the rock mass around the old working is known. All is needed is a good knowledge of geology, properties of rocks and reservoir fluids, dynamics of flow in porous and fractured media, knowledge about the wellbore design and wellbore production characteristic.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.