The plan is to store compressed air in an underground aquifier to enable its later release to generate power. Will be fantastic to see if it works!
Two downsides (assuming the site doesn't leak the air out):
- You can turn a large area into a jack, causing earthquakes (even where there haven't been any in geologic time). Easier to do injecting liquid. But injecting air could do it, too.
- You'll have some significant losses due to heat pumping. (Compressing the air heats it, expanding it cools it. Much of your energy goes to pumping the heat, just like a refrigerator. If you dump the heat on compression and replace it with ambient heat on expansion you lose that energy. Insulating the pipes on the way to the storage, and using the ground's insulating properties, may mitigate that, by storing the heat with the compressed air and recovering most of it when the air is used.)
Neither issue looks insurmountable. The quake risk just requires good site selection. Inefficiency is not prohibitive when fuel is "free" and you just need to build stuff to tap it.
Of course, just because it's possible and being done doesn't mean it's without flaw. In late 2000, one of the storage caves sprung a leak and OneOK, in their finite wisdom, kept pumping natural gas into it to keep the pressure up. The leaking gas found its way out through several abandoned wells that had been used in salt extraction, one of which was downtown. Much hilarity and flames ensued... scratch the hilarity part. Two people died when gas leaking from a well exploded in a mobile home park. The folks in Hutch were quite nervous for many days, not knowing when or where another geyser of flammable gas might breech the surface.
Pictures: http://www.kgs.ukans.edu/Hydro/Hutch/Background/
Article: http://www.ljworld.com/section/hutchinsonfires/story/40281[ Parent ]
also i doubt there will be much pressure stored, but a butt load of volume!
look forward to seeing how their plan works
bob g
Rather than compressing air you might want to consider pumping water below the air cavity thereby increasing the air pressure to a more efficient pressure by being able to pump the water to higer pressures than might be possible (or economical) than air. Paul
