CO2 EPOC project: effect of CO2 on the polymeric materials within the CO2 transport chain

Abstract

Sustainable and efficient deployment of carbon capture and storage (CCS) requires suitable and reliable solutions that can be ensured at all levels of the value chain. Demonstrations of capture and storage technologies developed in the last decades have already realized a TRL able to support a quick CCS deployment, but knowledge gaps still exist regarding which polymer materials may be safely and effectively used in the CO2 transport infrastructure (e.g., elastomeric seals, gaskets, pipe liners, etc.). Transport of supercritical CO2 by pipeline or cryo-compressed CO2 by ship create very different, but highly demanding environments. These environments have different effects on polymeric materials, which up to now have not been systematically investigated. This raises concerns for long-term deployment of such materials in the CO2 value chain. The CO2-EPOC project aims to create knowledge on the compatibility between polymeric materials and CO2 streams to aid proper selection of polymer-based materials across the CO2 transport infrastructure (pipelines- and ship-mode) to avoid leakage and failure across the CCS chain which greatly undermines the efforts spent on CO2 capture.