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Geochemical monitoring of deionized seawater injected underground during construction of an LPG rock cavern in Namikata, Japan, for the safety water curtain system

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Abstract

An underground liquified petroleum gas (LPG) storage facility was constructed between 2003 and 2013 in Namikata, Imabari City, Ehime Prefecture, Japan, to increase domestic LPG stockpiles. The most important issue during construction and operation of this facility is gas leakage prevention. To thwart water leakage, the water curtain system was constructed according to design standards, and a large amount of deionized seawater (seal water) was continuously injected into the rock mass around the cavern to keep the water level constant during both construction and operation. It is possible to distinguish three end member waters (existing groundwater, seawater or fossil seawater, and seal water) using the salinity and isotope (δ18O) difference because seal water injected underground has almost the same δ18O value as seawater. In this study, continuous observation is carried out using the geochemical techniques for flow analysis with a mixing proportion of three end-members in the initial construction period (April 2005 to March 2006) of the LPG underground storage facility. It is determined that existing groundwater and fossil seawater originally distributed in this region are partly replaced by seal water in the cavern.

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Fig. 1

Modified from the location of LPG stockpiles in Japan; Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, https://www.meti.go.jp/press/2017/11/20171102002/20171102002.html.)

Fig. 2

Modified from Otake 2000.)

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Acknowledgements

This study was carried out as a part of the investigation of JOGMEC project in the Namikata LPG cavern excavation. We would like to express our gratitude to the JOGMEC members for their cooperation, advice, and opinions regarding this survey. We would like to express our gratitude to the members of the Energy Business Center of Mitsubishi Materials Corporation, the Energy Business Division of Mitsubishi Materials Techno Corporation, and the Namikata Construction Management JV Office, in particular, to S. Ueda, Y. Nakamura, and K. Tanaka for their advice and cooperation in sampling, analysis, and result analysis. We also extend our appreciation to Enago (www.enago.jp) for the English language review. We would like to express our deepest gratitude to the editor, Samir Al-Gamal, and the anonymous reviewers for their generous and thoughtful comments and advice, which greatly helped us to improve the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Science, University of Toyama, 3490 Gofuku, Toyama, 980-8555, Japan

    Akira Ueda

  2. Energy Business Center, Mitsubishi Materials Corp., 1-600, Kitabukuro, Saitama, 100-8117, Japan

    Akira Ueda, Takafumi Furukawa, Kohei Yamaguchi & Masayuki Yageta

  3. Engineering Division, Mitsubishi Materials Techno Corp., 1-30-7 Daito, Tokyo, 110-0016, Japan

    Akiko Ozawa

  4. Department of Geoengineering, Dia Consultant Co., Ltd, 2-272-3 Yoshino, Saitama, 330-8508, Japan

    Yasushi Kusakabe

  5. Petroleum and LPG Stockpile Management Department, Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation (JOGMEC), 2-10-1 Toranomon, Tokyo, 150-0001, Japan

    Takeshi Otake

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  1. Akira Ueda
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  2. Akiko Ozawa
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  3. Yasushi Kusakabe
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  4. Takafumi Furukawa
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  7. Takeshi Otake
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Correspondence to Akira Ueda.

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12665_2021_10062_MOESM1_ESM.docx

Supplementary file1 Isotopic composition and Cl concentration analysis results of water samples collected in the study area are shown. (Samples with major chemical composition values are also shown in Table 1) (DOCX 151 kb)

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Ueda, A., Ozawa, A., Kusakabe, Y. et al. Geochemical monitoring of deionized seawater injected underground during construction of an LPG rock cavern in Namikata, Japan, for the safety water curtain system. Environ Earth Sci 80, 744 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-021-10062-5

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