oa Experimental and Numerical Study of Terrain-Induced Unstable Flow in CO2 Pipelines

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) systems have emerged as an important technology for reducing industrial CO2 emissions. A critical component of these systems is the transportation of CO2 via pipelines. Under certain storage conditions, such as low reservoir pressure, or low wellhead pressure, without pressure enhance method, the CO2 two-phase flow will present in pipeline and well. Allowing two-phase flow presence in pipeline can reduce both OPEX and CAPEX of the CCS pipeline system.

One of the key risks of CO2 two-phase flow in pipeline and well is unstable flow behavior, called slugging. The dynamics of terrain slugging in CCS pipelines are distinct from those encountered in conventional oil and gas transport systems.

A dedicated experimental study on unstable CO2 two-phase flow under different pipe geometry at IFE’s FALCON test facility, some of the experimental data from this work will be analyzed in detail to explore the mechanism of the unstable flow formation. In addition to this, the CO2 module in the latest release of the commercial flow assurance tool OLGA is used to analyze these experimental data and the overall performance of this code for CO2 two-phase unstable flow will be evaluated.