Innomission1

Innovation Fund Denmark invests in mission-driven research and innovation partnerships. InnoMissions are big, predefined missions that need to be solved for the benefit of the Danish society and to contribute to reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. InnoMission1 focuses on the area of CCUS: carbon capture, utilization, and storage. Researchers apply for funding by defining a roadmap of a possible solution to the problem, and this specific project regards the use of existing infrastructure in order to store CO2storage in reservoirs. In some cases, the production of CO2 in the industry is inevitable, and so it needs to be utilized or stored. One possible way of storing CO2 is in the oilfields in the North Sea, and this project investigates whether and how the existing infrastructure can be used for this; the project thus works as an enabler of the CCUS strategy and green transition.

The project and its partners

When CO2 is captured, impurities are inevitable. Impurities are the chemical substances inside a confined amount of liquid (in this case CO2), and these impurities risk corrosion of the equipment, which is what is investigated in this project. Corrosion poses a risk of CO2 leakage and induces a larger material consumption, for which reason the results of the project are very useful in the industry. For the time being, the project is still in its initial phase regarding survey of the existing knowledge and use of the technology. Subsequently the project must be delimited and defined, and this includes determining which are the most important impurities to be focused on. Through many advanced and lengthy tests, the ultimate aim is to provide a mathematical model that can predict the corrosion on both new and existing infrastructure. This then enables companies to determine which quality the materials must have to prevent uncontrolled release of CO2, so that the cheapest material possible can be used without the risk of corrosion.

Project leader Simon Pedersen and PhD-student Kenneth René Simonsen are working with several important partners on this project. Previous cooperation with Welltec paved the way for the application, and this work will continue along with cooperation with the other partners Gas Storage Denmark, Force Technology and Rambøll. The companies all have different agendas and perspectives on the problem, which according to Simon Pedersen “make the project very interesting and enables exchanging of knowledge on the challenges as well as several different uses of the results”.