SimCCS: An open-source tool for optimizing CO2 capture, transport, and storage infrastructure

Abstract

Commercial-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology will involve deploying infrastructure on a massive and costly scale. This effort will require careful and comprehensive planning to ensure that capture locations, storage sites, and the dedicated CO2 distribution pipelines are selected in a robust and cost-effective manner. Introduced in 2009, SimCCS is an optimization model for integrated system design that enables researchers, stakeholders, and policy makers to design CCS infrastructure networks. SimCCS2.0 is a complete, ground-up redesign that is now a portable software package, useable and shareable by the CCS research, industrial, policy, and public communities. SimCCS2.0 integrates multiple new capabilities including a refined optimization model, novel candidate network generation techniques, and optional integration with high-performance computing platforms. Accessing user-provided CO2 source, sink, and transportation data, SimCCS2.0 creates candidate transportation routes and formalizes an optimization problem that determines the most cost-effective CCS system design. This optimization problem is then solved either through a high-performance computing interface, or through third-party software on a local desktop computing platform. Finally, SimCCS2.0 employs an open-access geographic information system framework to enable analysis and visualization capabilities. SimCCS2.0 is written in Java and is publicly available via GitHub to encourage collaboration, modification, and community development.