Multi-well solution mining exploitation of an evaporite mineral stratum

Abstract

A method for in situ solution mining of a mineral from an underground evaporite stratum using a set of wells in fluid communication with at least one mineral cavity with some wells operated in solvent injection mode and other wells operated in brine production mode and optionally with some inactive wells, comprising switching the operation mode of one or more wells. The evaporite mineral preferably comprises trona. The at least one cavity is preferably formed by lithological displacement of the evaporite stratum at a weak interface with an underlying insoluble stratum by application of a lifting hydraulic pressure. The extracted brine can be processed to make valuable products such as soda ash and / or any derivatives thereof, rock salt, or potash. This method can provide more uniform dissolution of mineral in the cavity, can minimize flow channeling, can minimize sodium bicarbonate blinding for solution mining of incongruent trona ore, and / or may avoid uneven deposit of insolubles.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]The present application claims the priority benefit to U.S. provisional application No. 61 / 792,879 filed on Mar. 15, 2013, the whole content of this application being incorporated herein by reference for all purposes.STATEMENT REGARDING FEDERALLY SPONSORED RESEARCH OR DEVELOPMENT[0002]Not applicable.TECHNICAL FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0003]The present invention relates to a method for the continuous exploitation of a mineral cavity provided in an underground evaporite mineral stratum via multi-well solution mining.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0004]Sodium carbonate (Na2CO3), or soda ash, is one of the largest volume alkali commodities made world wide with a total production in 2008 of 48 million tons. Sodium carbonate finds major use in the glass, chemicals, detergents, paper industries, and also in the sodium bicarbonate production industry. The main processes for sodium carbonate production are the Solvay ammonia synthetic process, the ammon...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The present invention provides a method for efficiently mining evaporite minerals, such as trona, to produce a brine solution containing sodium carbonate and / or bicarbonate. The brine solution can then be used to make various sodium-based products, such as sodium sesquicarbonate, sodium carbonate monohydrate, and sodium carbonate decahydrate. The continuous mode well-switching process avoids high vertical dissolution over small areas that would likely lead to problems related to geomechanical instability of the cavity being solution mined. The manufacturing process is simple and efficient, and the resulting sodium-based products have various uses in industry.

Problems solved by technology

The cost of the mechanical mining methods for trona is high, representing as much as 40 percent of the production costs for soda ash.

Furthermore, recovering trona by these methods becomes more difficult as the thickest beds (more readily accessible reserves) of trona deposits with a high quality (less contaminants) were exploited first and are now being depleted.

Thus the production of sodium carbonate using the combination of mechanical mining techniques followed by the monohydrate process is becoming more expensive, as the higher quality trona deposits become depleted and labor and energy costs increase.

Furthermore, development of new reserves is expensive, requiring a capital investment of as much as hundreds of million dollars to sink new mining shafts and to install related mining and safety (ventilation) equipment.

These insoluble contaminants not only cost a great deal of money to mine, remove, and handle, they provide very little value back to the mine and refinery operator.

Implementing a solution mining technique to exploit sodium (bi)carbonate-containing ores like trona ore, especially those ores whose thin beds, beds of lower trona quality (e.g., less than 70% quality), and / or deep beds of depth greater than 2,000 ft (610 m) which are currently not economically viable via mechanical mining techniques, has proven to be quite challenging.

This method however proved unsuccessful, and currently there are two approaches to trona solution mining that are being pursued.

According to FMC's 1985 article though, the application of hydraulic fracturing for trona solution mining was found to be unreliable.

Fracture communication attempts failed in some cases and in other cases gained communication between pre-drilled wells but not in the desired manner.

These attempts of in situ solution mining of virgin trona in Wyoming were met with less than limited success, and technologies using hydraulic fracturing to connect wells in a trona bed failed to mature.

In fracturing between spaced wells in evaporite mineral formations for the purpose of removing the mineral by solution flowing between the adjacent wells, the ‘fracking’ methods used in the oil & gas industry are however not suitable to accomplish the formation of a single main horizontal fracture.

Since these contaminants-rich minerals are generally soluble in the same solvent as the desirable mineral, if solvent flow is allowed to occur to reach contaminated overlying layers, this would allow contaminants from these overlying layers to dissolve into the solvent, thereby “poisoning” the resulting brine and rendering it useless or, at the very least, making its further processing into valuable product(s) very expensive.

Indeed, poisoning by sodium chloride from chloride-based minerals can occur during solution mining of trona, and it is suspected that the solution mining efforts by FMC in the 1980's in the Green River Basin were mothballed in the 1990's due to high NaCl contamination in the extracted brine.

These incongruent solubilities of sodium carbonate and sodium bicarbonate can cause sodium bicarbonate ‘blinding’ (also termed ‘bicarb blinding’) during solution mining.

Blinding occurs as the bicarbonate, which has dissolved in the mining solution tends to redeposit out of the solution onto the exposed face of the ore as the carbonate saturation in the solution increases, thus clogging the dissolving face and “blinding” its carbonate values from further dissolution and recovery.

Blinding can thus slow dissolution and may result in leaving behind significant amounts of reserves in the mine.

It can be shown that the aforementioned problem arises because when trona, for example, is dissolved in water, both the sodium bicarbonate and the sodium carbonate fractions begin going into solution at the same time until the solution reaches saturation with respect to sodium bicarbonate.

Unfortunately, the resulting liquid phase existing at this point is in equilibrium with sodium bicarbonate in solid phase, and the sodium carbonate continues to dissolve while the bicarbonate starts precipitating out until the final resulting solution is in equilibrium condition with sodium sesquicarbonate (trona) as the stable solid phase, in fact, reached wherein a substantial portion of sodium bicarbonate precipitates out of solution and a lot more of the sodium carbonate has gone into solution.

Once a channel is created, it may result in low or near zero dissolution rates of the surrounding ore, as the solvent bypasses solute-containing ore and fails to expose the mineral solute to the solvent.

Some of the problems of prior art solution mining techniques, for example the formation of “morning glory” holes which are generally narrow at the base and flare outward at the top in a generally convex upward cross-sectional floor profile.

A variety of techniques have been attempted in order to prevent the formation of such types of holes, since they are very wasteful and since they result in a low percentage of mineral recovery from the bed.

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