Abstract Underground gas storage (UGS) are an important guarantee for national energy strategic reserves,but the monitoring of gas reservoir distribution has always faced challenges. Time-lapse microgravity monitoring technology can infer the movement patterns of substances based on density changes at different times. Simulation results indicate that this technology provides strong support for the dynamic monitoring of UGS. However, in the process of processing time-lapse microgravity data, it is necessary to use field separation technology to obtain the gravity anomaly of the target body. In order to obtain more accurate and stable fi eld separation results, this paper utilizes the low-rank nature of the regional fi eld and the sparsity of the local fi eld in potential field data, and adopts a method based on Robust Principal Component Analysis (RPCA) for fi eld separation processing. In the study of the gas injection process in the Y21 UGS, microgravity measurement and processing results show that the areas with enriched natural gas in the UGS are approximately annular and located in the structural high-point areas, which basically match the geological structural characteristics.Due to the presence of boundary faults, according to the results of time-lapse microgravity, it is inferred that groundwater moves towards the structural high-point areas, and natural gas mainly moves towards the southwest direction, providing the direction of underground fluid movement during the gas injection process in the UGS.
About author: Xiang Peng, Senior Engineer, obtained his Ph.D. in Geological Resources and Geological Engineering from China University of Petroleum (East China) in 2009. He conducted postdoctoral research at Sinopec from 2012 to 2015. Currently, he is employed at the Exploration and Development Research Institute of Sinopec Shengli Oilfield Company, focusing on the research of geophysical exploration methods, theories, and applications in gravity, magnetism, and electromagnetism.
Cite this article:
. Time-lapse microgravity monitoring technology for underground gas storage and application based on Robust Principal Component Analysis[J]. APPLIED GEOPHYSICS, 2025, 22(3): 770-783.
2025, Vol. 22 
