Abstract
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.
Highlights
For several decades, salt caverns in many salt deposits around the world have been used as underground caverns—storage of liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons, hydrogen [1] and other useful substances [2,3,4,5]
In the last 20 years, due to the demand for storage capacities in the country, three underground gas and fuel storage warehouses in salt deposits were built in Poland, established in salt leaching caverns (Table 2)
The time measured from the start of leaching in the borehole to reach the final dimensions of the cavern lasts from several to several or more years, and the individual stages of the cavern leaching usually takes several to several months or more
Summary
Salt caverns in many salt deposits around the world have been used as underground caverns—storage of liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons, hydrogen [1] and other useful substances [2,3,4,5]. The research methodology is based on the use of a high-pressure water jet stream to cut out niches in rock salt samples under laboratory conditions to test efficiency of this process. Efficiency of water jet cutting of salt rocks is confirmed with 500 bar pressure that allows to assume preliminary input parameters for planned full scale salt leaching tests with disc niche cutting on the construction of the new installation. Central Poland and adjacent areas to the north and northwest with salt dumps; Zechstein salts occur here at a depth of less than 1000 m only in the form of salt dumps, breaking through completely or partially through the Mesozoic overburden; Fore-Sudetic area with salt seams, extending in the direction of NW–SE from the area of new salt, through hawthorn and further towards SE; The Baltic area with salt deposits, from Łeba in the west to the Gdańsk Bay in the east In each of these areas there are deposits currently exploited.
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