CO2 streams captured from power stations or industrial plants may contain impurities that impact the consecutive steps of the CO2 capture and storage (CCS) chain. As the basis for an optimization of CO2 purity over the whole CCS chain, impacts of different impurities were investigated at key steps including studies on (i) corrosion of metallic materials in CO2 streams and brine, (ii) fluid and interfacial properties as a function of pressure, temperature and CO2 stream composition and their implications for CO2 transport, injection and geological storage, (iii) costs of different pipeline design options, (iv) geochemical alterations at typical reservoir conditions and their implications for geomechanical rock properties. Major findings are synthesized for two exemplary single source-single sink CCS chain scenarios involving CO2 stream compositions typical for pre-combustion capture and oxyfuel combustion. Recommendations for material selection for compression, transport and injection were derived for various CO2 stream compositions. To reliably control corrosion, a limitation of water contents to 50 ppmv is recommended for pipeline transportation of all CO2 streams. At geological storage conditions, the presence of either O2, NOx or SO2 only weakly affected fluid-mineral/rock interactions that still impacted geomechanical rock properties.
Combining CO2 Streams from Different Emitters – A Challenge For Transport And Storage Infrastructure
(2015)
The European Directive 2009/31/EC on the geological storage of CO2 envisages an open access of CO2 streams from different emitters to a nation- or even EUwide CO2 pipeline network if CO2 stream compositions meet “reasonable minimum composition thresholds”. As of today it is not known how such “composition thresholds” may be defined and which impurity levels may be viable in practical application.
To set up recommendations for criteria and respective threshold values for CO2 stream compositions, the project “CLUSTER” will investigate how a dynamic interplay – both in terms of mass fluxes and compositions – of CO2 streams from regionally clustered CO2 sources sharing a transport and storage infrastructure will impact corrosion, e.g., of pipelines and plant components, and geochemical alteration of cap rocks and reservoir rocks. In addition, the behaviour of such a highly dynamic CCS system will be considered for an overall optimization of system design including CO2 stream mixing schemes and facilities or interim CO2 storage.