NATURAL COMPRESSED AIR STORAGE: A CATASTROPHE AT A KANSAS SALT MINE
On October 26, 2000, a brick factory in Kanopolis, Kansas, USA, was substantially destroyed by bricks, sand, and water falling from the sky. The bricks and sand were blown skyward by a high-speed jet of air blowing from an underlying salt mine. The jet of air blew from a previously sealed salt mine shaft and through a pile of bricks next to the brick factory. The escaping (high-speed) air carried bricks and sand skyward more than 100 meters before they fell back to earth and demolished the brick factory. The underground salt mine had been closed about 50 years earlier, and its shafts were sealed with salt, sand, and straw. This paper presents facts and observations, hypotheses, and calculations that indicate the air trapped in the salt mine when the shafts were sealed was subsequently compressed by a combination of natural salt-creep closure of the salt mine and groundwater migrating into the mine. On the day of the incident, the shaft seals apparently failed, and the compressed air blasted from the suddenly opened shaft. For several minutes, the speed and volume of the escaping air were enough to accelerate bricks high into the air. Surface sand and water were blown skyward for an even longer period while the air streams speed slowed as the air pressure was reduced in the mine. The calculations and interpretations that explain this unusual salt mine incident involve rock mechanics and salt creep, two-phase fluid flow, air compression and storage, air velocity through a mine shaft, and calculating the drag and gravitational acceleration of bricks in a high-velocity air stream. The case study is both interesting and technically informative as regard to possible consequences of salt mine abandonment and compressed-air storage.
compressed air abandoned salt mine creep shaft seals
Leo L.Van Sambeek
RESPEC
国际会议
9th International Symposium on Salt(第九届世界盐业大会)
北京
英文
620-632
2009-09-05（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）