Geomechanical investigation for abandoned salt caverns used for solid waste disposal
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Geomechanical investigation for abandoned salt caverns used for solid waste disposal Xilin Shi 1 & Qinglin Chen 2 & Hongling Ma 1 & Yinping Li 1 & Tongtao Wang 1 & Chao Zhang 1 Received: 30 August 2019 / Accepted: 13 October 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Using abandoned salt caverns for the disposal of solid wastes is one of the most effective and safest methods to deal with potential hazards caused both by the abandoned caverns and by the solid wastes. To investigate the geomechanical behavior of abandoned salt caverns used for solid waste disposal (alkali wastes), a discrete-continuous coupled method is proposed. In the proposed method, alkali wastes (discrete materials) are simulated using the discrete element method (DEM) while the caverns are simulated using the finite difference method (FDM). This method can overcome the shortcomings of the traditional method of treating the alkali waste as continuous materials with low strength, which cannot accurately depict the interaction between the cavern and alkali waste. Using the proposed method, a 3D geomechanical model is built to investigate the long-term mechanical behaviors of the cavern and alkali waste. The results show that the alkali wastes have significant effects on reducing the cavern convergence while the cavern convergence compacts the alkali wastes. Consequently, the surface subsidence induced by the convergence of the cavern is much smaller than that of a cavern which does not contain alkali wastes. This study provides a prerequisite to evaluate the effect of filling abandoned salt caverns filled with alkali wastes and also can serve as a reference for stability analysis of gas storage salt caverns that contain insolubles. Keywords Rock mechanics . Abandoned salt cavern . Solid waste disposal . Discrete-continuous coupling . Surface subsidence
Introduction To protect national energy security and blunt the significant economic impacts of a shortage stemming from international events in times of energy crisis, a large number of underground storage facilities have been constructed. Underground storage can effectively balance the conflict between a variable demand market and a nearly constant supply of energy provided by the pipeline system (Evans and Holloway 2009; Wang et al. 2019). A salt cavern is an important method for large-scale storage of natural gas, petroleum, and compressed air due to the stability and tightness of salt
* Qinglin Chen [email protected] 1
State Key Laboratory of Geomechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, Institute of Rock and Soil Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430071, Hubei, China
2
State Key Laboratory of Coal Mine Disaster Dynamics and Control, College of Resources and Environmental Sciences, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400044, China
(Zhang et al. 2017a; Wang et al. 2018a, c, d; Rouabhi 2019; Ge et al. 2019; Liu et al. 2019, 2020; Zhang et al. 2020a, b). The salt cavern will be abandoned after 30~50 years of operation. Part of the aba
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