The impact of contamination during transport of liquid CO2

Ruhr University Bochum is participating in a new project financed by the EU, called “COREu – CO2 Routes Across Europe”. The goal of the project is to research options to develop and expand the infrastructure for carbon capture and storage (CCS). Headed by the Norwegian SINTEF Energy institute, 43 industry and research partners are working on conceptualising and representing the entire chain from CO2 capture to storage. The European Commission supports this endeavour with around 30 million euros, of which approximately 400,000 euros will go to Ruhr University Bochum. The project, set to begin in 2024, is planned to last four years.

The chair of thermodynamics headed by Prof. Dr Roland Span of Ruhr University Bochum will be involved as part of the COREu project. The team from Bochum will concentrate on examining the impact of contaminations on the transport of CO2. “Transporting pure CO2 is a straightforward, controllable process”, says Roland Span. “Problems occur if there are contaminations. These can be gaseous components, like argon or nitrogen, or combustion products like sulphur dioxide.” Contaminations like these alter the material properties of the liquid carbon dioxide. How exactly they do this remains hitherto unknown.

“We can only design optimal pipelines for transporting CO2, for example, if we have these data”, explains Span. If the exact impact of contaminations is unknown, engineers are forced to strengthen the thickness of the pipeline walls beyond the usual safety margins in order to guarantee maximum safety. This, however, leads both to an increase in materials consumed and to an increase in costs.

The exact material property data models being developed in Bochum thus contribute to, for example, being able to precisely calculate the necessary wall thickness. “Our research is supposed to ultimately help reduce the costs for the entire system”, says Roland Span.