Suitability of depleted gas fields for underground hydrogen storage in Australia
Karsten Michael A * , Jonathan Ennis-King B , Julian Strand A , Regina Sander B and Chris Green BA CSIRO Energy, Perth, WA, Australia.
B CSIRO Energy, Melbourne, Vic., Australia.
The APPEA Journal 62 S456-S460 https://doi.org/10.1071/AJ21055
Accepted: 24 February 2022 Published: 13 May 2022
© 2022 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing on behalf of APPEA.
Abstract
If there is a significant adoption of hydrogen in Australia as an energy carrier, it will be necessary to have storage options to buffer the fluctuations in supply and demand, both for domestic use and for export. For large-scale storage in a single location, underground hydrogen storage (UHS) is the preferred option for reasons of both cost and safety. The search for suitable sites for UHS will depend on the proximity to potential hydrogen generation, ports, and processing infrastructure, as well as CO2 storage options for blue hydrogen. Although UHS in salt caverns is an established technology, most of the suitable salt deposits in Australia (in the Canning Basin in WA, the Adavale Basin in Qld, and the Amadeus Basin in the NT) are not always well-located for production and transport. Depleted gas fields have been used previously for storage of hydrogen-rich gas mixtures as well as natural gas storage and appear to be the most promising and widely available UHS option in Australia. There appears to be sufficient storage capacity in depleted gas fields in most of the geographic areas with hydrogen production potential. However, there are still technical challenges to be addressed, such as the extent of possible contamination of the stored hydrogen with residual hydrocarbons, and the possible effects of geochemical reactions and microbial processes.
Keywords: Australia, CCS, depleted fields, storage capacity estimation, underground hydrogen storage.
Karsten Michael has MSc and PhD degrees in Hydrogeology from the Technical University Berlin and from the University of Alberta, respectively. After finishing university, he worked as a hydrogeologist at the Alberta Geological Survey/Alberta Energy and Utilities Board in Canada on the characterisation of acid-gas injection operations before joining CSIRO in Perth in 2007. He currently is Principal Research Scientist in the CSIRO Energy business unit. Karsten was a project leader of the CSIRO in situ Laboratory project that involved re-completing one of the wells at the South West Hub CCS Flagship project in Western Australia for monitoring and testing purposes. In the past, Karsten was a project leader for Understanding CO2 storage in Saline Aquifers in the CO2CRC. |
Jonathan Ennis-King is a senior research scientist with CSIRO Energy. He received a PhD in Applied Mathematics from the Australian National University in 1994. He subsequently held postdoctoral positions at the University of Melbourne, Lund University (Sweden) and the Australian National University, researching theoretical chemical physics. He joined CSIRO in 1999 to work on the geological storage of carbon dioxide. He has been a key researcher in all stages of the CO2CRC’s Otway International Test Centre, and since 2019 has been involved in leading work on underground hydrogen storage. |
Julian Strand is a senior research scientist at CSIRO Energy. He is primarily working on structural geology and issues related to incorporating structural geology into reservoir, basin models, and applying this to hydrogen and CO2 storage. Julian has been based in Perth since 2005 and was part of the Fault Analysis Group for 9 years at the University of Liverpool and latterly at University College Dublin (Ireland). He attended the University of Liverpool and Imperial College, London. |
Regina Sander is a senior research scientist and team leader at CSIRO Energy. She obtained her undergraduate degree in Process Engineering from Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (Germany) and a PhD in Petroleum Engineering from the University of New South Wales, assessing the techno-economics of CO2 storage in coal seam gas reservoirs. Regina joined CSIRO in 2010, researching unconventional gas reservoirs. She has since led projects investigating underground gas transport and storage processes as well as several techno-economic assessments. |
Chris Green is a senior research scientist at CSIRO Energy. He holds a PhD in applied mathematics from the University of Melbourne, and joined CSIRO in 2006. He has worked on numerous projects related to analytical and numerical modelling of geological storage of CO2, and is currently involved in several projects related to underground storage of hydrogen. |
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