Abstract
There is a need to accurately design pipelines to meet the expected increase in the construction of carbon dioxide (CO2) pipelines after the signing of the Paris Climate Agreement. CO2 pipelines are usually designed with the assumption of a pure CO2 fluid, even though it usually contains impurities, which affect the critical pressure, critical temperature, phase behaviour, and pressure and temperature changes in the pipeline. The design of CO2 pipelines and the calculation of process parameters and fluid properties is not quite accurate with the assumption of pure CO2 fluids. This paper reviews the design of rich CO2 pipelines including pipeline route selection, length and right of way, fluid flow rates and velocities, need for single point-to-point or trunk pipelines, pipeline operating pressures and temperatures, pipeline wall thickness, fluid stream composition, fluid phases, and pipeline diameter and pressure drop calculations. The performance of a hypothetical pipeline was simulated using gPROMS (ver. 4.2.0) and Aspen HYSYS (ver.10.1) and the results of both software were compared to validate equations. Pressure loss due to fluid acceleration was ignored in the development of the diameter/pressure drop equations. Work is ongoing to incorporate fluid acceleration effect and the effects of impurities to improve the current models.
Highlights
Greenhouse gases are mainly responsible for the gradual rise in atmospheric temperatures
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) [1], global warming for the past 50 years is mostly due to the burning of fossil fuels
Transporting CO2 in liquid phase at low temperature (−40 ◦ C to −20 ◦ C) and 6.5 maximum operating pressure (MPa) results in lower compressibility and higher density than CO2 in supercritical state [60]. This means that lower pressure losses occur and smaller pipe diameters are adequate for liquid CO2 transportation with the requirement for fewer booster stations and thinner pipes thereby reducing capital cost
Summary
Greenhouse gases are mainly responsible for the gradual rise in atmospheric temperatures. The demand for CO2 for increased EOR operations would peak about the year 2025, requiring the transportation of about 150 million tons of CO2 [11] This is a small fraction of the over 6870 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions in the USA alone in 2014 [12]. Some existing CO2 pipelines in the world are listed followed by a review of the important factors affecting pipeline design These include: pipeline route, length and right of way (ROW), CO2 flow rates and velocity, point-to-point (PTP) and trunk/oversized pipelines (TP/OS), CO2 pipeline operating pressures and temperatures, pipeline wall thickness, CO2 composition, possible phases of CO2 in pipelines and models for determining pipeline diameter and pressure drop. It discusses the performance of the available diameter determination models
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