Eduardo Luna-Ortiz is the Operations Director at Pace CCS, a London-based engineering consultancy in Carbon Capture and Storage. Eduardo holds a BSc in Chemical Engineering from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and a PhD in Chemical Engineering / Process Integration from the University of Manchester (UK).
Eduardo later joined Imperial College London as a postdoctoral Research Associate at the Centre for Process Systems Engineering, where he worked on multiphase flow modelling, computational CO2 thermodynamics, advanced control of fuel cells, green hydrogen production and numerical optimization methods.
It is worth noting that the Sargent Centre for Process Systems Engineering (CPSE) at Imperial College London was a partner in the EU-funded CAPE-OPEN and Global CAPE-OPEN projects: CPSE delivered the CAPE-OPEN Numerical interface specifications within the CAPE-OPEN standard.
Abstract
To take advantage of economies of scale, the nascent CCS industry is considering developing projects under a ‘cluster’ model, where many industrial sources will dispose their CO2 to a common transport and storage infrastructure. The operator of the transport/storage system will manage the operation of whole network, but it will not be able to manage the (CO2 capture) operation of each emitter. This is a challenging setup. Any changes on the emitters side will have an impact into the operation and integrity of the network and the storage. The operator should be able to understand how the system reacts to those changes. To achieve this, an integrated model of the whole asset (surface facilities as well as subsurface stores) will become a crucial tool to simulate and optimize the performance of the CCS hub.
In this contribution, we will discuss the current state of modelling practices in the nascent CCS industry (most of them a legacy from the oil & gas industry), the pitfalls of such approaches and the justification to use CAPE-OPEN technology to enable more consistent designs (as well as the challenges that we will still encounter).