UKCCSRC Call Project Updates (Part 1) – September 2016 Edinburgh Biannual

Written by Marcus Simoes, a PhD student at the University of Sheffield, whose attendance at the UKCCSRC Biannual Meeting – Making the Case for CCS – in Edinburgh was supported by the UKCSRC Early Career Researcher Meeting Fund. 
 

Call 2 – Performance of Flow Meters with Dense Phase CO₂ and CCS Recovery Streams, PI: Mercedes Maroto-Valer (Heriot-Watt University), presented by Mahmoud Nazeri (Heriot-Watt University)

Dr. Mahmoud Nazeri presented the experimental work developed at the Heriot-Watt University together with Prof. Mercedes Maroto-Valer, which aims to investigate the performance of flow meters involving CCS flows. In particular, they assessed the impact of the impurities to the performance of the flow meters, since these impurities can modify the physical properties of the fluid, and this can lead to an increase of the uncertainties of the flow meters measurements. In order to achieve this, two flow meters were investigated, namely orifice plate and Coriolis mass flow meter.  As a result, they have found that the orifice plate flow meter is not adequate since the precision of this instrument is very low, in contrast to the Coriolis flow meter that is able to provide very accurate results.  Also, they have found that although the presence of impurities increases the uncertainties of the measurements, the Coriolis flow meter can still provide very accurate results, within ±2%, which is in compliance with the European Union Emission Trading Scheme requirements.

Call 2 – The Development and Demonstration of Best Practice Guidelines for the Safe Start-up Injection of CO₂ into Depleted Gas Fields, PI: Haroun Mahgerefteh (University College London)

Professor Haroun Mahgerefteh from the University College London presented his findings about what would be a safe start-up injection of CO₂ into depleted gas fields. The main problem associated to the injection of CO₂ is that the pressure of the wellhead is significantly lower than pressure of CO₂ at the delivery point, which is greater than 70 bar and at temperature between 4 and 8 oC, and this difference of pressure may cause a quasi-adiabatic expansion that can lead to a formation of hydrate and ice. As a consequence, a thermal chocking of the wellbore casing steel can occur, leading to its fracture with consequent scape of CO₂. In order to address this problem, Professor Haroun Mahgerefteh is developing and validating a model that simulates the injection of CO₂ and this model will provide the optimal injection strategies that will allow safe start-up injection of CO₂ into highly-depleted gas fields.

Call 2 – CO₂ Flow Metering through Multi-Modal Sensing and Statistical Data Fusion, PI: Yong Yan (University of Kent), presented by Jinyu Liu (University of Kent)

Jinyu Liu presented the results of his experimental work, which was performed at the University of Kent and supervised by Professor Yong Yan, using a very modern CO₂ flow test facility. The measurement of CO₂flows is challenging because it is performed at high pressures, as well as at complex flow conditions, e.g. two phase flow, supercritical flow, etc. In addition, these measurements need to be accurate, because they will help to identify leakage during the transportation of the CO₂ to the storage sites. In order to address this, it was developed a system that combines commercial Coriolis flowmeters and intelligent data fusion model. By applying this system, it was possible to obtain very high precision measurements, within 1.5% accuracy, even when the tests were performed under a two-phase CO₂ flow. However, the experiments were performed using pure CO₂, and the influence of the impurities in the precision of the flow meters measurements was not assessed, but according to Mr. Jinuy Liu this is within the scope of the next tests to be performed in the lab.
 

**Available presentations from the meeting can be found on the Edinburgh Biannual event page.**