Analyses of gas storage capacity in unlined rock caverns

Summary Groundwater control is a means of ensuring that no gas leakage occurs from unlined rock storage caverns. To achieve a better understanding of the principles of gas containment under groundwater and how to obtain maximum gas storage capacity, analyses of groundwater conditions surrounding storage caverns and the effects of different factors on gas storage capacity have been performed and are reported in this paper. The analysis results indicate that the critical gas pressure of a storage facility is considerably less than the natural hydrostatic pressure around the caverns and somewhat less than the water curtain pressure. High gas storage capacity can be obtained by optimizing the design of cavern configuration, water curtain layout, cavern depth, etc. The principles of such optimization are outlined in this paper.