Recent advances on carbon dioxide sequestration potentiality in salt caverns: A review

Abstract

Permanent CO2 sequestration in the salt caverns seems to be one of the best geological storage options that can be used to reduce anthropogenic greenhouse gases emissions (GHGs) from the atmosphere. However, salt caverns are rarely used because other geological options are more available; hence, they are used for energy source storage for future use due to their high deliverability and ability to quickly switch an injection well to a production well. Nevertheless, salt caverns seem to have low leakage risk compared to other geological storage options due to low permeability, high ductility, and self-healing ability after deformation. In this review, recent advances in CO2 sequestration in salt caverns have been presented. It has been revealed that salt caverns have great potential to store CO2 permanently to help to mitigate global climatic change. Salt caverns built offshore in ultra-deep water in Brazil and Lotsberg salt formation, Alberta and Saskatchewan, Canada, have a great potential to store ∼108 million tons of CO2 and 3500 megatons, respectively. Furthermore, from geochemical Modelling and simulation, it has been revealed that these caverns can store a substantial amount of CO2, specifically 4 billion sm3 or 7.2 million tons, under conditions of 45 MPa pressure and a temperature of 42 °C. The identified research gaps in this study will motivate researchers and stakeholders to conduct more research on developing technology to sequestrate CO2 into salt caverns as a reliable geological option to mitigate global climate change in places where other storage options are not available.