A Graphical Approach for Pinch-Based Source-Sink Matching and Sensitivity Analysis in Carbon Capture and Storage Systems

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is regarded as an important interim technology for the reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from large industrial facilities such as power plants and refineries. CCS involves capture of concentrated CO2 streams from point sources (industrial flue gases), followed by subsequent secure storage in an appropriate natural reservoir. Such reservoirs include various geological formations such as depleted oil or gas wells, inaccessible coal seams, and saline aquifers. In practice, such storage sites will have limitations on both CO2 storage capacity and injection rate, subject to geological characteristics. In this work, a graphical approach is proposed for matching multiple CO2 soruces and storage sites (sinks) optimally within a predefined geographical region. The technique is developed on the basis of analogies withe existing graphical pinch analysis approaches for the synthesis of industrial resource conservation networks (RCNs). Generalized principles for optimal CO2 source-sink matching based on pinch analysis insights are discussed in this work. In addition, sensitivity of the system to the uncertainties that occur in CCS planning (e.g., variation of actual injectivity and capacity as well as options for increase or decrease of source lifetime) is considered. Realistic case studies are shown to illustrate these various aspects of methodology

Unified pinch approach for targeting of carbon capture and storage (CCS) systems with multiple time periods and regions

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a key technology for the mitigation of industrial carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. It involves the reduction of emissions from large industrial facilities (i.e., sources) by capturing the CO2 from the exhaust gases and subsequently storing it in appropriate geological storage sites (i.e., sinks) such as depleted oil and/or gas reservoirs, saline aquifers, coal seams and other similar formations. In practice, these sites may not be readily available for storage at the same time or before the sources are operating, which gives rise to a temporal aspect in the planning problem. At the same time, sources and sinks may need to be clustered geographically to minimize the need to transport CO2 over long distances. This work presents an improved pinch analysis based methodology by simultaneously considering injectivity constraint of every sink as well as time of availability of various sources and sinks. Three illustrative case studies are used to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed methodology. The first two case studies illustrate graphical and algebraic variants, while the third case studies shows an extension that involves two distinct geographical regions. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved