Experimental Approaches for Emulating CO2 Transportation

As anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions increase in the atmosphere yearly, there is an increased need to reduce the emissions to limit global warming, where one approach is through CO2 capture. After capturing CO2, different components and levels of impurities will be present, depending on the source. These impurities can cause corrosion to the transportation infrastructure, where corrosion costs billions of dollars in the oil and gas industry every year. Therefore, investigating corrosion under different conditions is essential and makes emulating CO2 transportation processes within Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS) necessary. In this study, experimental approaches to emulate CO2 transportation and the pitfalls within these are dissected. Flow loops and autoclaves can emulate pipeline and ship transportation, respectively, which will give a greater understanding of the impact of impurities on the transportation infrastructure. There is a tendency to include variables and factors that do not represent any CO2 transportation scenarios within CCUS. This gives a wrong impression of the corrosion rate of a real CO2 transportation scenario within CCUS for the investigated material. This study presents the process conditions of four scenarios within CCUS and how to emulate them. Afterward, these process conditions are compared to experimental work from the literature to investigate their alignment with the real CO2 transport conditions. Lastly, this study suggests a recommended practice for emulating CO2 transportation processes within CCUS. It is concluded that by aligning the experiments with industrial conditions, the data can be utilized to improve future CO2 and material specifications for the CCUS industry, together with life cycle assessments.