Failure modes and effects analysis for CO2 transmission pipelines using a hesitant fuzzy VIKOR method

Abstract

Carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) is now considered to be one of the main technological options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It seems that pipeline transmission is an effective way to transport the large amount of CO2 from the capture site to the storage site over long distance for most CCUS projects. Therefore, risk assessment of CO2 transmission pipelines has been an important aspect for successful development of the CCUS industry in the future. Failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) is a group-based activity to prioritize risk. A group multi-criteria decision-making approach based on combined weights and the hesitant fuzzy VIKOR (vlsekriterijumska optimizacija i kompromisno resenje in Serbian, meaning “multi-criteria optimization and compromise solution”) method is proposed to evaluate the risk of CO2 transmission pipelines. First, a pair-wise comparison matrix for risk factors is constructed according to the evaluation information given by the FMEA team members, and a fuzzy analytic hierarchy process is used to determine the subjective weight vector of these risk factors. The maximizing deviation method is used to determine the objective weights of risk factors. Then, to select the most serious failure modes for CO2 transmission pipelines, the hesitant fuzzy VIKOR method is used to prioritize the potential failure modes that have been identified by the FMEA team members. Finally, a numerical example for risk assessment is given to illustrate the effectiveness and rationality of the proposed method.