UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies

Due to a heightened interest in technologies to mitigate global climate change, research in the field of carbon capture and storage (CCS) has attracted greater attention in recent years, with the goal of answering the many questions that still remain in this uncertain field. At the top of the list of key issues are CCS costs: costs of carbon dioxide (CO2) capture, compression, transport, storage, and so on. This research report touches upon several of these cost components. It also provides some technical models for determining the engineering and infrastructure requirements of CCS, and describes some correlations for estimating CO2 density and viscosity, both of which are often essential properties for modeling CCS. This report is actually a compilation of three separate research reports and is, therefore, divided into three separate sections. But although each could be considered as a stand-alone research report, they are, in fact, very much related to one other. Section I builds upon some of the knowledge from the latter sections, and Sections II & III can be considered as supplementary to Section I.

* Section I: Techno-Economic Models for Carbon Dioxide Compression, Transport, and Storage – This section provides models for estimating the engineering requirements and costs of CCS infrastructure. Some of the models have been adapted from other studies, while others have been expressly developed in this study. * Section II: Simple Correlations for Estimating Carbon Dioxide Density and Viscosity as a Function of Temperature and Pressure – This section describes a set of simple correlations for estimating the density and viscosity of CO2 within the range of operating temperatures and pressures that might be encountered in CCS applications. The correlations are functions of only two input parameters—temperature and pressure—which makes them different from the more complex equation of state computer code-based correlations that sometimes require more detailed knowledge of CO2 properties and operating conditions. * Section III: Comparing Techno-Economic Models for Pipeline Transport of Carbon Dioxide – This section illustrates an approach that was used to compare several recent techno-economic models for estimating CO2 pipeline sizes and costs. A common set of input assumptions was applied to all of the models so that they could be compared on an “apples-to-apples” basis. Then, by averaging the cost estimates of the models over a wide range of CO2 mass flow rates and pipeline lengths, a new CO2 pipeline capital cost model was created that is a function only of flow rate and pipeline length.