Geomechanical Studies of Rock Salt Caves in Gas Storage
Inaldo Silva1; Leonardo Guimarães1
1 UFPE
doi:10.20906/CPS/CILAMCE2015-0820
Resumo
The consumption and the production of gaseous and liquid fuels require strategic measures of crude oil storage and gas, is to ensure the control of market fluctuations, either because it is a national security issue. The storage of gas and oil is required, since the nature of these reserves assets are unevenly distributed across the crust and are not renewable. In addition, its production is dictated by geology, and its consumption is geographical relationship and sometimes seasonal, making it necessary to perform safety stocks. The gas storage problem and crude oil is old, and a solution is geological, it is possible to use natural or artificial spaces, as has been done in the United States since 1915. The sites used for storage can be depleted oilfields, confined aquifers and delimited by sealing layers, or in natural and artificial caves. In these, the storage is done in exhausted or abandoned mines; in open caverns in salt layers; or rock masses prepared for storage of gas. Currently, the problem of storage has increased, with the oil and natural gas discoveries in underwater layers of post and pre-salt. They carry with them a large-volume extraction and prediction of crude oil and gas shipments requiring mega deposits. However, we must clarify that there is no appropriate solution to accomplish this storage. The traditional method, made in steel tanks in the open, is expensive and dangerous. Have the methods of use of depleted reservoirs of gas or oil have been studied, but without conclusive results. As the caverns in rock salt deposits dissolved, for example, need to be studied and understood to contain gas storage in the salt naturally fractured formations. However needs to have numerical analysis geomechanical, simulated in the FEM (Finite Element Methods) CODE-BRIGHT to evaluate the fragmentation technique applied on rocks salts that have creep behavior. Generally, fragmentation technique for studying the fracture in structures of concrete, is the insertion of special finite elements regular interface
Palavras-chave: claves