Coupled hydromechanical analysis of an underground compressed air energy storage facility in sandstone

Sánchez, Marcelo; Shastri, Ajay Mitra; Le, Thi Minh Hue

doi:10.1680/geolett.13.00068

Cited by 27 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Compressed air energy storage in aquifers (CAESA), which costs less and has a wider availability, is becoming more attractive compared with CAESC [2,14]. The feasibility of CAESA was investigated by Oldenburg and Pan using numerical modelling, which showed its energy efficiency well using the operation scheme in the Huntorf plant [15].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Numerical Investigation of the Influences of Wellbore Flow on Compressed Air Energy Storage in Aquifers

Zhang

et al. 2017

Geofluids

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With the blossoming of intermittent energy, compressed air energy storage (CAES) has attracted much attention as a potential largescale energy storage technology. Compared with caverns as storage vessels, compressed air energy storage in aquifers (CAESA) has the advantages of wide availability and lower costs. The wellbore can play an important role as the energy transfer mechanism between the surroundings and the air in CAESA system. In this paper, we investigated the influences of the well screen length on CAESA system performance using an integrated wellbore-reservoir simulator (T2WELL/EOS3). The results showed that the well screen length can affect the distribution of the initial gas bubble and that a system with a fully penetrating wellbore can obtain acceptably stable pressurized air and better energy efficiencies. Subsequently, we investigated the impact of the energy storage scale and the target aquifer depth on the performance of a CAESA system using a fully penetrating wellbore. The simulation results demonstrated that larger energy storage scales exhibit better performances of CAESA systems. In addition, deeper target aquifer systems, which could decrease the energy loss by larger storage density and higher temperature in surrounding formation, can obtain better energy efficiencies.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Numerical Investigation of the Influences of Wellbore Flow on Compressed Air Energy Storage in Aquifers

Zhang

et al. 2017

Geofluids

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“…Geological features made of caprock, aquifer, and bedrock can be used for potential CAES facilities. However, the numerical analysis with field exploration shows that the aquifer site at Iowa in the USA fails to properly make the air bubble due to the unfavorable low permeability within the formation and the heterogeneous permeability of the reservoir exacerbates the situation due to the development of undesirable fingering and air passage [4]. Contrary to two geological formations for CAES design, an excavated cavern in the sedimentary formation provides greater flexibility for site selection.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of a Numerical Approach to Simulate Compressed Air Energy Storage Subjected to Cyclic Internal Pressure

Chong¹

2017

Energies

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This paper analyzes the long-term response of unlined energy storage located at shallow depth to improve the distance between a wind farm and storage. The numerical approach follows the hybrid scheme that combined a mechanical constitutive model to extract stress and strains at the first cycle and polynomial-type strain accumulation functions to track the progressive plastic deformation. In particular, the strain function includes the fundamental features that requires simulating the long-term response of geomaterials: volumetric strain (terminal void ratio) and shear strain (shakedown and ratcheting), the strain accumulation rate, and stress obliquity. The model is tested with a triaxial strain boundary condition under different stress obliquities. The unlined storage subjected to cyclic internal stress is simulated with different storage geometries and stress amplitudes that play a crucial role in estimating the long-term mechanical stability of underground storage. The simulations present the evolution of ground surface, yet their incremental rate approaches towards a terminal void ratio. With regular and smooth displacement fields for the large number of cycles, the inflection point is estimated with the previous surface settlement model.

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“…), compressed air energy storage (Sánchez et al . ), wastewater injection (Ellsworth ) and geologic carbon storage (Rutqvist ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of the stress regime on microseismicity induced by overpressure and cooling in geologic carbon storage

Vilarrasa

2016

Geofluids

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Fluid injection in deep geological formations usually induces microseismicity. In particular, industrial-scale injection of CO 2 may induce a large number of microseismic events. Since CO 2 is likely to reach the storage formation at a lower temperature than that corresponding to the geothermal gradient, both overpressure and cooling decrease the effective stresses and may induce microseismicity. Here, we investigate the effect of the stress regime on the effective stress evolution and fracture stability when injecting cold CO 2 through a horizontal well in a deep saline formation. Simulation results show that when only overpressure occurs, the vertical total stress remains practically constant, but the horizontal total stresses increase proportionally to overpressure. These hydro-mechanical stress changes result in a slight improvement in fracture stability in normal faulting stress regimes because the decrease in deviatoric stress offsets the decrease in effective stresses produced by overpressure. However, fracture stability significantly decreases in reverse faulting stress regimes because the size of the Mohr circle increases in addition to being displaced towards failure conditions. Fracture stability also decreases in strike slip stress regimes because the Mohr circle maintains its size and is shifted towards the yield surface a magnitude equal to overpressure minus the increase in the horizontal total stresses. Additionally, cooling induces a thermal stress reduction in all directions, but larger in the out-of-plane direction. This stress anisotropy causes, apart from a displacement of the Mohr circle towards the yield surface, an increase in the size of the Mohr circle. These two effects decrease fracture stability, resulting in the strike slip being the least stable stress regime when cooling occurs, followed by the reverse faulting and the normal faulting stress regimes. Thus, characterizing the stress state is crucial to determine the maximum sustainable injection pressure and maximum temperature drop to safely inject CO 2 .

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Coupled hydromechanical analysis of an underground compressed air energy storage facility in sandstone

Cited by 27 publications

References 9 publications

Numerical Investigation of the Influences of Wellbore Flow on Compressed Air Energy Storage in Aquifers

Numerical Investigation of the Influences of Wellbore Flow on Compressed Air Energy Storage in Aquifers

Development of a Numerical Approach to Simulate Compressed Air Energy Storage Subjected to Cyclic Internal Pressure

The role of the stress regime on microseismicity induced by overpressure and cooling in geologic carbon storage

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