High pressure CO2 CCS pipelines: Comparing dispersion models with multiple experimental datasets

Abstract

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) presents the short-term option for significantly reducing the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) released into the atmosphere from the combustion of fossil fuels, thereby mitigating the effects of climate change. Enabling CCS requires the development of capture, storage and transport methodologies. The safe transport of CO2 in CCS scenarios can be achieved through pipelines or by shipping. Either way, transport and temporary storage of pressurised liquid CO2 will be required and subject to quantitative risk assessment, which includes the consideration of the low-risk, low-probability puncture or rupture scenario of such a pipeline, ship or storage facility. In this work, we combine multiple experimental datasets all concerned with the atmospheric free release of pure and impure liquid CO2 from CCS-transport-chain-relevant high pressure reservoirs and perform the first multiple dataset comparison to numerical models for both pure and impure CO2 jets in dry ambient air with no water vapour. The results validate the numerical approach adopted and for the prediction of such releases, highlight the significance of the mixture fraction at the release point, over the mixture composition itself. A new method for impure CO2 dispersion modelling is introduced and limited preliminary comparisons of impure CO2 data and predictions are performed. No clear difference between pure and impure releases is found for the cases considered.