Instability Analysis of Supercritical CO2 during Transportation and Injection in Carbon Capture and Storage Systems

Abstract

Captured CO2 is in a subcritical state, whereas CO2 deep underground is in a supercritical state because of the high geothermal heat and pressure. The properties of CO2 can change rapidly at the critical point and in the near-critical region during the transportation and injection process. This study aims to identify the instabilities in the CO2 flow in these regions, along with the causes and effects, during the transportation and injection process, and propose relevant design specifications. Thus, the critical points and near-critical region of CO2 flow were numerically analyzed. The unstable region is presented in terms of temperature and pressure ranges, and the changes in the CO2 properties in this region were analyzed. In the unstable region, the sudden change in density was similar to the density wave oscillation of a two-phase flow. The CO2 stability map we obtained and the stability map of supercritical water show similar trends. Flow instability was also found to occur in standard CO2 transportation pipelines. We demonstrate that flow instability in CO2 transportation and injection systems can be avoided by maintaining the proposed conditions.

Keywords

• supercritical CO2
• flow instability
• stability map
• CO2 pipeline
• carbon capture and storage (CCS)