LOSAC © : A first salt cavern abandonment software

Over recent years, considerable research effort, especially by the SMRI, has been invested on the subject of the long-term abandonment of salt caverns. At this point in time, the industry has still not clearly identified a universally accepted concept or approach to this major problem. One seemingly promising trend already identified is to consider the evolution of a saturated brine filled salt cavern with respect to the system’s thermal (brine expansion), geomechanical (cavern closure by creep) and hydraulic (brine micro-permeation in the salt massif) characteristics. Gaz de France has applied such a concept in the development of a computer programme named LOSAC intended to evaluate the long-term evolution of its salt caverns in different abandonment scenarios. LOSAC is financed by Gaz de France and developed with Brouard Consulting and LMS/Ecole polytechniq ue (France). This presentation proposes a short demonstration of the software with the aim of illustrating a practical application of this specific cavern abandonment concept in a very user-friendly computer program.