This blog is written by Antonio Salituro, a UKCCSRC ECR member from the University of Leeds, who received funding from the UKCCSRC ECR Meeting Fund to attend the International Forum on Recent Developments of CCS Implementation Leading the Way to a Low-Carbon Future which took place in Athens, March 2015.
The CCS International forum held in Athens on 26th and 27th March 2015 was a great event. Athens is an amazing city to be visited and also the venue chosen for the occasion was very classy.
The forum was perfectly organised by the staff and all of us were given a very warm welcome. Several presentations were delivered during the two-day event. These were arranged in order to cover eight themes.
On the 1st day, besides some plenary sessions, oral presentations covering four different topics were given. The first session concerns the transport of CO2 and relevant safety issues. The use of numerical simulations was shown to be very useful to forecast the behavior of the fluid flow along pipelines. Modelling of accidental gas release and following dispersion in the atmosphere was presented. The effect of obstacles (e.g. buildings, terrain) was also considered. In addition to that, it was explained how the presence of water and other impurities could s significantly change the physical properties of the fluid flow.
The second section focused on the development of novel solvents/materials for the capture of CO2. The potential of ionic liquids at capturing carbon dioxide was emphasised.
On the other hand, I had the great pleasure to show how amine-modified activated carbons can be another competitive alternative to the use of liquid solvents. I was really glad that my talk drew the attention of the audience since I have been asked few questions about it.
I also presented a poster which gave me the chance to interact with other participants. Therefore, my personal experience was extremely positive since I got the most out of this precious opportunity.
 as post-combustion technique and oxy-fuel combustion processes were the focus. Advantages, limitations and commercial viability of these solutions were thoroughly discussed. However, techno-economic analyses of the overall CCS system were presented. These included both capture performances and the impact of the purity of the CO<sub>2</sub> captured on the subsequent stages (i.e. transport, storage). The potential implementation of the CCS systems was assessed with the aid of appropriate models.</p><p>Finally, the last session of the day gave further insight about the importance of measuring thermophysical properties of solvents or multiphase (i.e. CO<sub>2</sub> and other impurities) flows. As concerns the capture stage, measurements of viscosity, solubility and diffusivity of CO<sub>2</sub> in solvents are a key factor to consider. Additionally, solubility, viscosity and density of mixtures having different compositions significantly affect the transport and storage of CO<sub>2</sub> as well. Both modelling and experimental methods were used for the estimation of the aforementioned parameters. </p><p><img decoding=)
