Hadi Hajibeygi

Delft University of Technology

Energy Storage in Salt Caverns

Salt caverns have been created for decades through solution mining, primarily to extract salt for use specially in the chemical industry. After salt extraction, the empty caverns are either abandoned or repurposed as storage tanks. Currently, more than 2,000 caverns are in use in North America for energy storage. Notably, feedstock hydrogen has been stored in caverns for over five decades. Moreover, for energy transition, hydrogen economy is expected to significantly scale up cavern utilization. Salt rocks are heterogeneous with complex deformation mechanisms, distinct from porous rocks, specially under cyclic loading. Therefore, investigating their mechanical behavior at different scales is crucial for their safe design, operation, and abandonment. We present our robust method to characterize their complex elastic-plastic mechanics under cyclic loading. Based on this, stability, performance and interactions of 3D cavern structures are investigated. Our models and methods are made publicly available through our in-house open-source "SafeInCave" simulator.