Cost-effective balance between CO2 vessel and pipeline transport

Abstract

As part of large scale application of CO2 capture and storage, million tons CO2 per year have to be transported by pipelines and/or vessels from capture to storage sites. In previous studies, costs of, pipeline systems and point-to-point vessel connections have been estimated. In this research, these cost analysis are supplemented by adding a transport system combining vessel and pipeline transport. The cost savings potential of this multimodal CO2 transport system has been analyzed for the West Mediterranean region (i.e. Spain, Portugal, and Morocco) - where vessel transport can play an important role. In detail: A multimodal extended adaption of a pipeline system optimization model has been defined and was then parameterized adapting a nonlinear vessel and pipeline transport cost model. Next, cost savings due to vessel transport were quantified for the West Mediterranean region. When CO2 emissions are stored in the region itself, cost could be lowered by up to 20% on routes with low transport volumes and in a complementary way by a redirection of flows at the expense of longer transport distances to prevent costly offshore storage. In case of a European CO2 transport infrastructure including North Sea storage, transport of CO2 by vessel could be profitable if CO2 is used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR). However, North Sea neighboring countries can be expected to crowd out Iberian CO2 of the market for EOR storage volumes.