Towards defining reasonable minimum composition thresholds – impacts of variable CO2 stream compositions on transport, injection and storage

The collaborative project “Impacts of impurities in CO2 streams captured from different emitters in a regional cluster on transport, injection and storage (CLUSTER)” aimed to set up recommendations on how to define “reasonable minimum composition thresholds” that CO2 streams should meet when accessing CO2 transport pipeline networks. Within CLUSTER, we investigated potential impacts of CO2 streams with different and temporally variable compositions and mass flow rates along the whole CCS chain. Investigations included, amongst others, impacts on: • corrosion of pipeline steel, • pipeline network design and related transport costs, • alteration of well bore cements, • pressure development and rock integrity, • geochemical reactions, and • petrophysical and geomechanical rock properties. All investigations are based on a generic CCS chain scenario. In this scenario, CO2 streams are captured from a spatial cluster of eleven emitters and collected in a regional pipeline network. Emitters comprise seven fossil fuel-fired power plants equipped with different capture technologies, two cement plants, one refinery and one integrated iron and steel plant. In total, 19.78 Mio t CO2 (including impurities) are captured in the emitter cluster annually. The combined CO2 stream is transported in a trunk line with a length of 400 km (100 km of these offshore) and is injected into five generic storage structures. The storage reservoirs are saline aquifers of the Buntsandstein. The investigations revealed beneficial and deteriorating impacts of different impurities and combinations thereof. Overall, no fundamental technical obstacles for transporting, injecting and storing CO2 streams of the modelled variable compositions and mass flow rates were observed. Based on the results, the CLUSTER project team recommends not to define “minimum composition thresholds” for CO2 streams as strict threshold values for each individual impurity in the stream. Instead, CO2 stream compositions and variabilities for specific CCS projects should be constrained with regard to a set of parameters including i) the overall CO2 content, ii) maximum contents of relevant impurities or elements, iii) acceptable variability of CO2 stream composition, and iv) impurity combinations to be avoided.