The Department of Energy (DOE) has announced several new projects aimed at expanding future approaches for storing natural gas, improving gas transportation and pipeline reliability and integrity.

Preparing for the day when gas may need to be stored in a variety of different settings — as hydrates in aboveground tanks, or in chilled form in refrigerated rock caverns, or in salt formations miles away from the nation’s coast — the department said it has selected four cost-sharing projects, valued at more than $2.5 million, to study innovative storage methods.

DOE’s Strategic Center for Natural Gas, which is part of the National Energy Technology Laboratory, is preparing to award storage-related research contracts to:

* New York State Museum of Albany, NY, to study sophisticated geologic reservoir techniques to develop a systematic “blueprint” for removing and disposing of salt water (brine) produced when caverns are developed in areas remote to ocean disposal. Brine disposal is considered the primary barrier to using salt caverns for natural gas storage sites in may regions of the United States. The project cost is $629,645, with the DOE to pick up $484,427.

* CAES Development Co. LLC of Houston, which plans to conduct a proof-of-concept study to determine the potential for full-scale deployment and commercialization of a previously developed DOE technology, known as refrigerated-mined rock cavern technology (RMRCT). This concept involves mining deep openings in crystalline rocks to store chilled and compressed gas in areas without conventional gas storage options. The project cost is $560,018, with DOE sharing $354,918.

* Mississippi State University, which will demonstrate a gas-hydrate storage process for safe, aboveground gas storage that operates at moderate pressures and temperatures. Hydrates are ice-like formations with a molecular structure that holds large volumes of gas. The proposed work will design, assemble and demonstrate, at proof-of-concept scale, a gas-hydrate laboratory process that pressurizes a surfactant and water solution to grow gas-laden, self-packing hydrates on metal. Project cost is $1.21 million, with DOE contributing $834,600.

* Clemson University, Clemson, SC, to assess the costs of creating gas storage capacity within underground carbonate rocks by using hydraulic fracturing and acid dissolution. If successful, the project could be applied to the Northeast, Midwest, western states and several other regions where carbonate formations are widespread. The project cost is $1.36 million, with the DOE sharing almost half — $647,194.

In a related development, the DOE said it plans to add another 10 cost-sharing projects to develop cutting-edge automation, new sensors and leak detectors, corrosion monitors, and other advanced devices to improve the way natural gas is transported in the future.

The projects to be added were proposed by: Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS; Gas Technology Institute, Des Plaines, IL; CyTerra Corp., Waltham, MA; New York Gas Group, New York, NY; Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio; Geophysical Survey Systems Inc., North Salem, NH; Automatika Inc., Pittsburgh; West Virginia University Research Corp., Morgantown WV; and Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA.

In addition, DOE is calling on national labs to aid private industry in developing new technologies to improve the integrity and reliability of future gas transmission and distribution systems. The labs would help with 11 government-industry cost-sharing projects, which the department announced in May, that are designed to prevent pipeline damage. The projects would use robotics and other sophisticated way to bolster the strength of pipelines, and therefore the integrity and reliability of the systems that crisscross the U.S., the department noted.

The National Energy Technology Laboratory, the fossil energy research arm of DOE, plans to manage 10 research and development projects, to be performed at eight of the national labs. Total funding for the projects is estimated at about $3 million, DOE said.

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