Carbon dioxide transport plays a crucial role in carbon capture and storage systems. Pipelines are an economical and convenient carbon carrier. there are many similarities between the carbon dioxide pipeline and the natural gas pipeline, but due to different gas compositions and transportation destinations, the transport process, design, and construction considerations are quite different.
The project aims to evaluate the potential opportunity to transport carbon in the NTS and determine the key areas of work required to update the safety case and enable deployment on the network. The focus for this work is on gaseous phase carbon transportation as it is considered that dense phase transportation will not be possible in existing natural gas pipelines. This project will also confirm this assumption.
Benefits
Obtain a better and more accurate understanding on what work is needed on our current network to transport Carbon Dioxide and whether this would be a feasible option for carbon transport. Pipelines may be an economical and effective way to transport Carbon Dioxide to give blue hydrogen its 'net zero' status.
Learnings
Outcomes
The outcomes of this project are as yet unknown, given the project is yet to complete, however we are predicting being able to use the information that comes out of this project to build a carbon dioxide transport safety roadmap, by which many more projects will be able to research in more depth the areas of concern highlighted in the reports.
Value tracking Data Point Data Point Definition
Maturity TRL 2-3 At concept level (NIA Project)
Opportunity 100% or multiple asset classes Covers pipelines, valves
Deployment costs £0 Unknown deployment costs, research project
Innovation cost £700,322 Cost of innovation project, phase 1
Financial Saving £0 Unknown at the moment, research project
Safety 0 Not project focus
Environment 0.0 Unknown at the moment- may know in time
Compliance Supports compliance.
Skills & Competencies No change
Future proof Supports business strategy CO2 transportation is an exploratory topic for NIA
There are no net benefits realised so far, however the forecast benefits to be delivered in the year will be:
· Obtain a better and more accurate understanding on what work is needed on our current network to transport Carbon Dioxide and whether this would be a feasible option for carbon transport.
· Pipelines may be an economical and effective way to transport Carbon Dioxide to give blue hydrogen its 'net zero' status, so creating the groundwork for this could give rise to further projects to make this come to fruition.
Lessons Learnt
The benchmarking report took significantly longer than expected to be produced, and this was because a number of different teams were working remotely on it and also, critical project details from other carbon dioxide pipelines weren’t easily shared, meaning more work and time was needed to receive the critical information. As a result, this first milestone was pushed back. As a lesson learnt from this experience, it’s clear that benchmarking exercises may take longer than originally anticipated due to difficulty to get information and this should be built into the project next time to mitigate.
Technical lessons learnt from this project include, gaseous phase carbon dioxide transport is much safer from a repurposing point of view due to the fact that there are less risks to assets and materials across the board. For the water ingress report, the amount of water needed to mitigate corrosion in the pipe is so small that serious consideration is needed for the repair and maintenance processes, so that water isn’t introduced into the system. Other lessons will be gathered and shared as more reports are completed.
