Unique properties of rock salt and application of salt caverns on underground energy storage: a mini review

ABSTRACT

This review focuses on rock salt and underground salt caverns for energy storage. Rock salt is characterized by three unique properties: favorable rheology with a fracture strain of 4.5%, low permeability (10⁻¹⁹ ~ 10⁻²¹ m²), and self-healing when damaged. These characteristics make underground salt caverns widely used in energy storage and geological treatment of radioactive waste. This review illustrates three properties of rock salt in detail and analyzes the specific applications of energy storage using salt caverns. Hydrocarbons include natural gas, oil, compressed air, hydrogen, CO₂, and toxic wastes. Finally, outlook and research directions are discussed regarding salt behavior and energy storage using salt caverns.

KEYWORDS:

• Review
• rock salt
• salt cavern
• energy storage
• geotechnical engineering

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Major Research Development Program of Hebei province [21374101D], Major Research Development Program of Hubei province [2022BAA093, 2022BAD163] and Major science and technology research and development project in Jiangxi Province [2023ACG01004].