Digital Design Tool for CO2 Transport Systems

Next-generation advances in CO2 transport and storage technologies will enable sustainable power generation and chemical industries to capture and transport carbon dioxide (CO2) for storage in subsurface reservoirs. In steel CO2 transport pipelines, oxygen can promote corrosion, leading to potential failures and leaks. Low oxygen levels help mitigate this risk Hence there is a need to develop new digital tools for the conceptual design and early process configuration planning of CO2 conditioning equipment to reduce the oxygen concentrations in CO2 transport systems. In the proposed work TDA Research will work with AZO Global (Houston, TX), to develop new digital tools that can support the early conceptual design and process configuration of CO2 conditioning equipment to identify system designs that reduce oxygen gas (O2) concentrations in captured CO2 streams so that these streams meet transportation and storage CO2 quality specifications. The proposed project encompasses tool development to address potential asset integrity threats related to higher than desired trace oxygen gas concentrations within a CO2 stream and keeps its desired concentration to less than 10 ppm-mol. In Phase I, the project will consider and include both current state of the art removal technologies and potential technologies in early-stage development that may become applicable. We will then down select a set of relevant technologies to include in the digital tool, define the requirements for the digital tool and have the basic elements of the tool developed to allow for technology selection to reduce oxygen concentrations in the CO2. The tool will be refined in Phase II to so that the digital tool can progress into a robust solution for inspecting, monitoring and maintenance of CO2 transport infrastructure. This new digital tool developed here will be able to assess, evaluate, predict, and potentially monitor the asset integrity of carbon transportation system hardware and individual components (e.g., booster equipment, pipelines, casing and tubing) when exposed to carbon dioxide with various impurities and operating conditions throughout an asset’s design life. Hence it will become the essential piece of the low carbon economy, derisking CO2 transport and storage.