Temperature Envelope for Construction of Salt Caverns
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Having abundant, clean, and reasonably priced energy is one of the challenges that humanity has been facing for centuries. Storing energy efficiently and in large quantities is a fundamental aspect of this problem on which there is still no great progress. The main goal of this work is to study the use of salt caverns as a massive hydrogen storage system. That is, the aim is to reach a global view of the structural behaviour of the salt cavern which allows to classify different places on earth as feasible or not to build these structures. Authors have analysed a prototype cavern in salt domes through a structural model applying finite element methods that takes into account the evolution of temperature and depth. The results of these models allow us to determine if the safety of the structure is guaranteed for its useful life or if, on the contrary, great deformations and stresses will be experienced, which will cause a loss of resistance in the rock mass and its collapse. The developed methodology has been successfully applied to real examples of caverns recently built in the US, and it has been proven that none of them exceed the determined stability limit values.
