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CO₂ impurities

Technical Report

1 April 2016

Industry Insights

Hamed Aghajani, Simon Benson, Hannah Chalmers, Maria-Chiara Ferrari, Jia Li, Julia Race, Ben Wetenhall

Citation: IEAGHG, "CO₂ impurities", 2016-01, April 2016.

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Publication Overview

The main objectives of the report are to:

  • Review the CO₂ impurities that could be present from different CO₂ capture technologies and develop twelve CO₂ impurity scenario compositions for further analysis;
  • Evaluate these impurity scenarios for CO₂ physical and transport properties. The properties that are investigated are the dew point, bubble point, melting point, density, Joule-Thomson coefficients, speed of sound, viscosity and thermal conductivity;
  • Evaluate the effects of the impurities on CO₂ compression and liquefaction in terms of performance and energy requirements;
  • Identify the effects of the impurities on the operating conditions for both pipeline and ship based transportation;
  • Evaluate the effect of the impurities on the selection of materials for pipeline and ship transportation.

Publication Summary

  • The study identified twelve worst-case but plausible impurities scenarios that are representative of the main CO2 capture processes.
  • Impurities greatly affect the thermodynamic and transportation properties of CO2
  • Apart from pure CO2, the CH4-rich scenario exhibited the most desirable qualities for dense phase pipeline transport.
  • Only one case (i.e. adsorption with high N2 content) showed significantly higher compression energy requirement than the other scenarios, being 7% more than the base case.
  • For dense phase transport, the worst-case scenarios (i.e. adsorption with high N2 content and oxyfuel combustion with high O2 content) would lead to an increase in pipeline sizes compared to the base case, which would raise their capital cost.
  • Temperature has a more pronounced effect on density than pressure, meaning that in order to increase the pipeline’s capacity the inlet temperature should be as low as possible.
  • Saturation pressure of CO2 is a critical variable for fracture control. Especially H2 has a strong elevating effect on saturation pressure. High levels of O2 and N2 also lead to an increase.
  • The water specification for some scenarios (i.e. adsorption with high N2 content and oxyfuel combustion with high O2 content) will require careful consideration, due to the influence of impurities on water solubility, which in turn can affect corrosion and stress corrosion cracking. CO and H2S may also increase the risk of stress corrosion cracking.
  • Ship transport under most investigated scenarios would be uneconomical, as it requires high pressures and very low, i.e. cryogenic, temperatures. Thus, it might only be economically viable in case of very high CO2 The general arrangement and design parameters would likely be similar to a Type C ship for liquefied natural gas (LNG) but need to consider the significant variation in density of different impurity scenarios.

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