CO2 transport research

COSHER

The CO2 capture, transportation, and storage (CCTS) process may become an important option for mitigating climate change. To make CCTS a viable mitigation option, the challenge of transporting captured CO2 via pipeline will have to be overcome to ensure system safety and reliability.

Project
KEMA is investigating the technical and economic challenges associated with transporting CO2 for a transport company in the Netherlands. The project’s goal is to develop a system that utilizes past experience from other countries, but adopts it to Western European requirements and safety standards.

Objectives
The project’s main aim is to find safe, reliable, and economically optimal solutions for transportation-related issues. Determining the optimum transport pressure, pipeline diameter, and compression requirements is a significant challenge. KEMA has developed an optimization tool that enables the client to make the necessary technical and economic analyses. Business cases for future projects have also been developed, using the technoeconomic model. From these resulting projections, the thermodynamic properties of CO2 were calculated and used to investigate the energy consumption and operating cost of a CO2 pipeline system. The next research step will carefully determine the thermodynamic properties of CO2 under transport conditions.

With a view to accurately predict outflow and subsequent CO2dispersal, an ongoing project is investigating the relevant phenomena. In the project, called COSHER, a consortium of Western European companies, which are interested CO2 transportation, is studying the behavior of escaped CO2, such as in the event of a leak. The project’s aim is to gather outflow data that can be used to test outflow simulation models, which in turn provide information needed for decision-makers about CO2 pipelines routing and safe separation distances.

Benefits
Creating a network and knowledge infrastructure in the Netherlands will help stakeholders better understand and support a complex long-term transition process towards large-scale deployment of CCTS. A prime project characteristic is that all major stakeholders and multidisciplinary groups work together; this is essential, because system implementation depends on the (potential) performance and impacts of all integrated system elements.

Project coordinator
> KEMA, the Netherlands

Project partners
> The majority of this innovative work is being done for one particular client in the Netherlands, and this work involves preparing a CO2 transportation strategy. However, KEMA is also collaborating with a number of other partners from all parts of the CCTS chain. Leading industrial partners in the project are Gasunie, Shell, RWE and E.ON Benelux.

Project details
> Duration: 2007 – 2011