Speaker
Description
The Hydrogen Economy is one proposed model for decarbonizing the hydrocarbon industry while still utilizing much of its infrastructure. One anchor of our current hydrocarbon industry in the US and Canada is the fleet of 635 porous media and salt cavern facilities where natural gas is stored on a seasonal cycle. Because the energy per unit volume of hydrogen is approximately one-third of natural gas, a Hydrogen Economy would need approximately three times as much pore space to accommodate the current amount of energy stored. This would likely require a mix of expansion at some current facilities as well as the construction of new storage facilities. In light of this potential need for re-evaluation of current facilities and exploration for new facilities, a database was built of all currently operating natural gas storage facilities as well as closed facilities for which some record exists publicly. For each facility, the age, formation, and lithology of the reservoir and caprock were identified for each storage unit in a facility (i.e., some facilities have multiple reservoirs). The trap type (e.g., structural or stratigraphic) was noted. In total, 715 reservoir-caprock pairs were identified in the US and Canada. The most common reservoir type was a Devonian/Mississippian/Pennsylvanian sandstone depleted petroleum reservoir (n=251). The next most common was a Silurian carbonate petroleum reservoir (n=47), followed by Jurassic salt caverns (n=42). Reservoir lithology was geographically dependent. For example, in the West and Alaska most reservoirs were Cretaceous or Paleogene in age, while in the rest of the country they were Paleozoic in Age. Salt storage is only found on the Gulf Coast. Work is ongoing to identify type petrophysical well logs for each facility and build a database of petrophysical properties (e.g., porosity, permeability) that can be used for geological modeling and reservoir simulation of hydrogen storage in these and potential greenfield sites.
Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology & Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc., for the U.S. Dept of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA0003525. SAND2024-16935C.
| Country | USA |
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