Development of CO2 terminal and CO2 carrier for future commercialized CCS market

Abstract

So far CO2 shipping has only been introduced as a secondary option for long distances and small amounts because of the prevailing idea that CO2 shipping is more expensive than CO2 pipeline for transporting large amount CO2. This paper shows that CO2 terminal and large CO2 carrier can play a role of collecting CO2 from several sources and transporting CO2 in large volume so transport cost per tonnage of CO2 can be reduce in commercialized CCS market. Multi-stage CO2 liquefaction processes are developed to reduce total cost of CO2 compression and transport. For high pressure CO2 inlet stream, newly developed multi-stage liquefaction process with serial flash tanks enables power consumption reduced to 44% compared to single stage liquefaction process. By adopting new design concept of very large CO2 Carrier more than 40,000m3, optimal size of CO2 carrier can be provided for each voyage route and total cost of CO2 compression and transport is reduced. The results of economic assessment of CO2 transport show that CO2 shipping is economically competitive to CO2 pipeline even in the distance of 200–300km for large amount of CO2 transport such as 10Mt CO2/year or 20Mt CO2/year. CO2 transport by ship should be seriously re-considered as an effective transport method for commercialized CCS projects as well as early demonstration projects.