• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.178-184
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• 2011

Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) is a combination of energy storage and generation by storing compressed air using off-peak power for generation at times of peak demand. In general, both charging and discharging of high-pressure vessel are unsteady processes, where the pressure is varying. These varying conditions result in low efficiencies of compression and expansion. In this paper, a new constant-pressure CAES system to overcome the current problem is proposed. An energy analysis of the system based on the concept of exergy was performed to evaluate the energy density and efficiency of the system in comparison with the conventional CAES system. The new constant-pressure CAES system combined with pumped hydro storage requires the smaller cavern with only half of the storage volume for variable-pressure CAES and has a higher efficiency of system.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.845-846
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• 2009

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2002.10a
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• pp.287-294
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• 2002

CAES which is called as a compressed air energy storage was firstly developed at Huntorf, German in 1978. The capacity of that system was 290MW, and it can be treated as a first commercial power plant. CAES has a lot of merits, such as saving the unit price of power generation, averaging the peak demand, improvement of maintenance, enlarging the benefit of dynamic use. According to the literature survey, the unlined rock cavern should be proposed to be a reasonable storing style as a method of compressed air storage in Korea. We decided the hill of the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources as CAES site. If we construct the underground spaces in this site, the demand for electricity nearby Taejon should be considered. So we could determine the capacity of the power plant as a 350MW, This capacity needs a underground space of 200,000㎥, and we can conclude 4 parallel tunnels 550m deep from the surface through the numerical studies, Design parameters were achieved from 300m depth boring job and image processing job.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.446-454
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• 2010

CAES-G/T (Compressed Air Energy Storage - Gas Turbine) power generation is a likely option for the buffer facility stabilizing the fluctuation of the renewable powers, such as wind and solar powers. Considering the geological conditions, the underground CAES facility is most probable if the CAES-G/T generation is planed in Korea. In this kind of facility, a concrete plug is installed to seal the compressed air in the container, so that the selection of the shape and dimension of concrete plug could be a critical design factor. The stability evaluation of two types of plug was carried out by investigating the distribution of the factor of safety in the plugs and the distribution of contact pressure over the contact surface. The analysis result shows that the taper-shaped plug is more structurally stable than the wedge-shaped plug for the given geological condition. Possible separation of the rock-concrete interface around the spring line of the wedge-shaped plug is anticipated, which means the possible leakage of compressed air through the side wall and also means the poor mobilization of frictional resistance on that area.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.319-325
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• 2013

The objective of this study is to assess risks which might occur in connection with the storage of the highly compressed air in underground opening. Risk factors were selected throughout literature survey and analysis for the characteristic of CAES. Large risk factors were categorized in three components; planning and design phase, construction phase, and operation & maintenance phases. Large category was composed of 8 medium risk groups and 24 sub-risks. AHP technique was applied in order to analyze the questionnaires answered by experts and high-risk factors were selected by evaluating the relative importance of risks. AHP analysis showed that the operation & maintenance phases are the highest risk group among three components of large category and the highest risk group of eight medium risk groups is risk associated with the quality and safety. Risk having the highest risk level in 24 sub-risks is evaluated to be a failure of tightness security of inner containment storing compressed air.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.77-85
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• 2009

Flexible and lined segment air-tight tunnelling technology for Compressed Air Energy Storage-Gas Turbine(CAES-G/T) power generation was introduced. The distinguished characteristics of the air-tight tunnel system can be summarized by two facts. One is that the high inner pressure due to compressed air is sustained by surrounding rock mass with allowing sufficient displacement of lining segment. The other is that the air-tightness of storage tunnel was enhanced by adopting a specially designed rubber sheet. The flexible lined air-tight underground tunnel can be constructed at a comparatively shallow depth and near urban area so that the locally distributed CAES-G/T power generation can be accomplished. In addition, this air-tight tunnelling technology can be applied to a variety of energy underground storage tunnels such as Compressed Natural Gas(CNG), Liquifed Petroleum Gas(LPG), DeMethyl Ether(DME) etc.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.297-306
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• 2011

In this paper, we performed thermodynamic energy balance analysis of the underground lined rock cavern for compressed air energy storage (CAES) using the results of multi-phase heat flow analysis to simulate complex groundwater-compressed air flow around the cavern as well as heat transfer to concrete linings and surrounding rock mass. Our energy balance analysis demonstrated that the energy loss for a daily compression and decompression cycle predominantly depends on the energy loss by heat conduction to the concrete linings and surrounding rock mass for a sufficiently air-tight system with low permeability of the concrete linings. Overall energy efficiency of the underground lined rock caverns for CAES was sensitive to air injection temperature, and the energy loss by heat conduction can be minimized by keeping the air injection temperature closer to the ambient temperature of the surroundings. In such a case, almost all the heat loss during compression phase was gained back in a subsequent decompression phase. Meanwhile, the influence of heat conductivity of the concrete linings to energy efficiency was negligible.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.107-114
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• 2015

This study focuses on assessing risks which might occur in operation stage of CAES storage cavern and analyzing fire scenarios for the risk that have been assessed with highest risk level. Risks in operation stage were categorized into upper risk group and lower risk group. Components of upper risk group are technical risk, facility risk and natural disaster risk. Lower risk group is composed of 11 sub-risks. 20 experts were chosen to survey questionnaires. ANP model was applied to analyze the relative importance of 11 sub-risks. Results of risk analysis were compared with risk criterion to set risk priorities, and the highest risk was determined to be 'occurrence of the fire within the management opening'. Three fire scenarios were developed for the highest risk level and FDS (Fire dynamics Simulator) was used to analyze these scenarios. No. 3 scenario which air blows from tunnel into outside atmosphere represented that a rate of smoke spread was the fastest among three fire scenarios and a smoke descended most quickly below the limit line of breathing. Thus, No. 3 scenario turned out to be the most unfavorable condition when operating staffs were evacuated from access tunnel.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.568-576
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• 2015

In this study, scenarios based on the leakage of highly compressed air and fire occurrence turned out to be high risks in an operation stage of CAES facility were constructed and estimated. By combining Bernoulli equation with momentum equation, an expression to calculate an impact force of a jet flow of compressed air was derived. An impact force was found to be proportional to the square of diameter of fracture and the pressure of compressed air. Four types of fire scenarios were composed to evaluate an effects that seasonal change and location of fire source have on the spread behavior of smoke. Smoke from the fire ignited in the vicinity of CAES opening descended more quickly below the limit line of breathing than one from the fire occurred 10 m away from CAES opening, which is expected to occur due to a propagation of wave front of smoke. It was shown that a rate of smoke spread of the winter fire is faster than one of the summer fire and smoke from the winter fire spreads farther than one of the summer fire, which are dependent on the direction of air flow into access opening. Evacuation simulation indicated that the required safe evacuation time(RSET) of the summer and winter fires are 262, 670 s each.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.394-405
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• 2011

In this paper, we applied coupled non-isothermal, multiphase fluid flow and geomechanical numerical modeling using TOUGH-FLAC coupled analysis to study the complex thermodynamic and geomechanical performance of underground lined rock caverns (LRC) for compressed air energy storage (CAES). Mechanical stress in concrete linings as well as pressure and temperature within a storage cavern were examined during initial and long-term operation of the storage cavern for CAES. Our geomechanical analysis showed that effective stresses could decrease due to air penetration pressure, and tangential tensile stress could develop in the linings as a result of the air pressure exerted on the inner surface of the lining, which would result in tensile fracturing. According to the simulation in which the tensile tangential stresses resulted in radial cracks, increment of linings' permeability and air leakage though the linings, tensile fracturing occurred at the top and at the side wall of the cavern, and the permeability could increase to $5.0{\times}10^{-13}m^2$ from initially prescribed $10{\times}10^{-20}m^2$. However, this air leakage was minor (about 0.02% of the daily air injection rate) and did not significantly impact the overall storage pressure that was kept constant thanks to sufficiently air tight surrounding rocks, which supports the validity of the concrete-lined underground caverns for CAES.