Salt deposit older than dinosaurs may shape Australia’s energy future
Interesting Engineering • • business
Key Points:
- The Adavale Basin, a deep underground rock formation in Queensland, Australia, is being explored as a potential massive-scale storage site for renewable energy, particularly hydrogen gas, to address the intermittency of solar and wind power.
- Geoscience Australia recently conducted a $31 million drilling campaign, reaching a record depth of about three kilometers, to study the basin's geology and extract samples, focusing on the Boree Salt deposit, a thick salt layer suitable for creating underground storage caverns.
- Salt caverns are created by dissolving rock salt with water, leaving hollow chambers that can store gases like hydrogen; this method is already used internationally and offers a large-scale, long-duration energy storage solution.
- A single cavern in the Ad
