Estimating available salt volume for potential CAES development: A case study using the Northwich Halite of the Cheshire Basin

Abstract

The massively bedded rock salts forming the Northwich Halite Member of the Cheshire Basin represent a huge mineral resource, which historically, have been worked by dry mining for rock salt and brine production from both the area of wet rockhead and also from solution-mined caverns. More recently, the halite beds have also provided the host storage horizon for natural gas storage in specifically designed and constructed solution-mined salt caverns. Increasingly, compressed air energy storage (CAES) is being viewed as a viable bulk storage option for surplus electrical energy, which may be through the use of offpeak electricity from both conventional and renewable sources. We describe a novel technique using Esri's ArcGIS  Geographic Information System software, to derive potential storage cavern locations and an estimate of the physical volumes that might be available for storage purposes, including for CAES. The process involves defining the spatial distribution, thickness and insoluble content of the halite beds is described, together with an estimate of the potential physical volumes of solution-mined caverns. Cavern volumes compare favourably with those of current gas storage facilities, which are illustrated in terms of their surface footprints and use of resource.

Impact of Different Weather Years on the Design of Hydrogen Supply Pathways for Transport Needs

“…The maximum technical storage potential of salt caverns is determined by using the vector files of the appropriate salt structures within the regions. First of all, an eligibility analysis is performed on the salt structures to ensure that caverns are not built in inappropriate areas, as determined by a review of the literature [37][38][39][40][41][42]. An eligibility analysis is conducted using the Geospatial Land Availability for Energy Systems (GLAES) tool [43].…”

Numerical model and program development of TWH salt cavern construction for UGS

“…The usage of natural gas resources strongly fluctuates according to the season, while the gas well production is stable (Arfaee and Sola, 2014;Lawal et al, 2017). To balance the mismatch in gas supply and demand, in recent years, some countries have addressed the construction of large-scale storage caverns in salt rock formations (Evans and Chadwick, 2009;Le Duigou et al, 2017;Michalski et al, 2017;Parkes et al, 2018;Shi et al, 2017;Slizowski et al, 2017a). An appropriate leaching method is the key to successful construction of salt cavern gas storage.…”

Potential Exergy Storage Capacity of Salt Caverns in the Cheshire Basin Using Adiabatic Compressed Air Energy Storage

“…The types of underground facilities considered for CAES are salt caverns, porous rock, abandoned mines, and hard rock caverns. Of these, salt caverns are the cheapest and most flexible, in addition to having been used in both the Huntorf and McIntosh plants, and are thus considered to be the most promising structure [ 35 ].…”

“…The British Geological Survey (BGS) investigates the potential in the UK for salt caverns that can be used for CAES. A study released in 2018 [ 35 ] estimated the available salt cavern volume of the Cheshire Basin, UK suitable for CAES. It was estimated that just 1% of the available salt caverns could support up to 100 CAES storage facilities, each with roughly 16 caverns, with each cavern being over 100 m in height.…”

“…It was estimated that just 1% of the available salt caverns could support up to 100 CAES storage facilities, each with roughly 16 caverns, with each cavern being over 100 m in height. In this paper, the cavern data collected by BGS in Reference [ 35 ] is used to model such a CAES storage facility to estimate the total exergy storage potential of the cavern, the work energy needed to compress the air, and the work energy recovered during expansion.…”