Project Announcement: Enabling large scale hydrogen underground storage in porous media

March 21, 2022

This project aims to enable the hydrogen underground storage capacity in Australia by developing a framework (a screening tool) for hydrogen underground storage. This screening tool will relate hydrogen-brine-rock interactions, microbial reactions, geology and petrophysical properties and exiting number of wells and materials to caprock sealing and integrity, wellbore integrity, cycling process of hydrogen, hydrogen conversion and contamination. This tool will be used to select and evaluate the potential of hydrogen storage in depleted hydrocarbon reservoirs in the region of Katnook Gas Processing Facility (owned and operated by Beach Energy). In parallel with these activities, laboratory and modelling studies will be conducted in a PhD project to understand the impact of H2-Brine-Shale interactions on caprock integrity and sealing capacity. In addition, two MPhil projects will be carried out by staff from Beach Energy to assess and characterise caprock fracture for hydrogen underground storage, and to understand where and how the H2 economy best fits through energy network modelling in the context of Beach Energy’s business model.

More information on this project is available here.

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