Carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) is gaining momentum as a decarbonization solution. With years of research and development and several successful implementations, combined with recently approved prices on carbon, the market is positioned to grow rapidly. This presentation will recap the technical, economic and social drivers that have propelled the North American market to this stage. We will consider competing decarbonization methods, including CCUS, and their roles in decarbonization efforts in the future. Early adoption market constraints will be examined, as well as long-term opportunities and how the CCUS market is anticipated to grow.
Some estimates indicate the CCUS market will grow to be a trillion-dollar global market annually. This growth would require collaboration between numerous technology OEM’s and EPCs to meet this projected demand. Kiewit is situated to support project developers, end-users and technology providers, and ready to engineer, procure, construct and commission these CCUS projects throughout North America.
In this presentation, I will focus on engineering processes from carbon capture projects initial concept phases to the final investment decision, technology and commercial readiness required for a mature industry, and regions that will likely be early adopters. I will share Kiewit’s criteria for a successful project and why we believe developing strong relationships improve results. Additionally, I will discuss commercial issues such as contract models, risk allocation and intellectual property. Finally, I will share how Kiewit has prepared for more engineering FEED studies and multiple EPC projects across North America with a variety of technologies.

HCR-6000® Modified Acid™ is a patented acid system that optimizes proton donation of hydrochloric acid to aid in efficient reservoir stimulation at low injection rates and volumes. The controlled dissociation of HCR allows for improved reservoir penetration and worm holing compared to traditional chemistries to increase the volume of pore space created to store carbon dioxide in underground geologic formations. Additionally, HCR offers a strong health, safety and environmental profile because it is non-corrosive to dermal tissue, biodegradable and low-fuming with ultra-low corrosion rate on common alloys.

This presentation captures key aspects of the material design for construction of CO2 transport pipelines and to make these available to project developers, decision makers and regulators working on CO2 transport projects. Pipe networks that collect CO2 from multiple emitters maximize economies of scale and reduce transport costs while offering better feasibility for capture retrofit for industrial facilities. To build CCUS hubs successfully we must mitigate risks of CO2 transport through careful design and material selection. By participating in several CO2 transport projects globally, we learned that currently CO2 hubs have no specific set of rules. Each hub has its own ad hoc standards for CO2 quality, acceptable impurities, pressure, and temperature. CO2 pipeline projects come in a wide variety with no blueprint for their design. To transport large amounts of CO2 efficiently, CO2 is compressed to around 100 bar and transformed to dense phase. Currently the regulations and standards used for CO2 pipelines originate in natural gas pipeline codes. Hazards, risks, and design practices for natural gas presently serve as a compass in CO2 risk assessment. It is true that the closet experience for dense phase CO2 transport is natural gas. However, there are stark differences between the two fluids. These differences are mainly due to the thermophysical properties of dense phase CO2. For instance, CO2 forms acid solution in aqueous phase causing corrosion and pipe cracks. To curb these adversities, the operator must keep the water at bay based on what is technically and economically practicable. However, the risk of residual water through the start-up phase and formation of water through transient operations (caused by CO2 phase change) must be carefully considered in the design. In presence of NOx, SOx and O2 typical to industrial CO2 and incidental formation of water in pipelines, CO2 pipelines can experience PH levels below 3 and stress corrosion cracking starts in matter of hours or days. Pipe cracks may the lead to severely low temperatures. The metals exposed to low temperature will experience embrittlement. Corrosion of the pipeline steel (usually carbon steel due to economic reasons) is a serious concern related to leakage and needs to be addressed during the entire project. The risk of stress corrosion cracking cannot be left unmitigated. Mitigation is only possible through appropriate material choice, deep dehydration of CO2 streams and close monitoring of the pipeline. Severely low PH conditions where there is risk of stress corrosion cracking in CO2 pipelines requires deeper understanding and representative experimental data. Currently there is a knowledge gap in this domain. This work presents Vallourec’s R&D program and experimental work to facilitate understanding of failure mechanisms in CO2 pipelines due to stress corrosion cracking and guidelines how to mitigate them.

GLJ has been evaluating numerous CCS developments with our clients as they develop their strategic decarbonization plans and respond to new CCS policy and regulatory framework. This presentation will first outline the step-by-step evaluation process, which includes the following: 1) Subsurface Screening and Candidate Identification 2) Reservoir Evaluation and Acquisition Plan 3) Reservoir Sequestration Simulation 4) Field Development and Monitoring, Measurement and Verification (MMV) Planning 5) Economic Modelling and Risking Once the comprehensive evaluation has been conducted and final investment decision (FID) has been reached, there is a continued need for updates to the above evaluation processes through the project development phases and during operations. Following the overview of the evaluation process, we will present our recent findings about a real field case study using CCS reservoir simulation and economic modelling and risking analysis. Reservoir simulation, also incorporated in the MMV plan, is required to be updated periodically to illustrate a safe and predictable sequestration performance at all CCS project stages from pre-injection to closure. Economic modelling and risking analysis are the critical elements for making FID. Our reservoir simulation and economic models were built using publicly available data from an existing CCS facility in Alberta. A 3-dimensional (3D) exocellular model was initially created of the Basal Cambrian sandstone (BCS) for our dynamic reservoir simulation model. It was tuned with an extensive history match performed to ensure main CO2 trapping mechanisms are captured and key properties that affect storage capacity were identified. Forecast cases are therefore conducted to evaluate short-term and long-term effects on plume migration and CO2 trapping. Sensitivity runs were performed to quantify their effects on injectivity, total storage and plume migration. The simulation model is set at the ongoing mode with the incorporation of more future field data and sensitivity studies. In this real-life example, our economic model will show the net present value (NPV) probability distribution, e.g., P10, P50, and P90, demonstrating a reasonable range of CO2 sequestration service fees. The economically attractive scenarios can be determined using the probabilistic model of the associated cost inputs. In summary, this knowledge bar session will give a guideline on how a representative CCS project is evaluated from both technical and economic aspects. The audience will be able to understand how an important FID is made on a representative large-scale CCS project.