CCS commercialisation: overview

Carbon capture & storage (CCS) has been identified as an essential technology in order to meet the 2050 Kyoto protocol targets.

However there are many challenges in implementing CCS systems on a commercial scale. A key challenge is to establish the interoperability of components of the “CCS chain” from power generation to storage.

System modelling – a key enabling technology

Successful commercial implementation of carbon capture & storage involves many decisions, and many trade-offs between the technical and economic factors, as well as collaboration between diverse stakeholders along the CCS chain.

System modelling has been identified as a key enabling technology for successful commercial implementation.

PSE worked with CCS stakeholders CO2DeepStore, EDF, E.ON and Rolls-Royce in a £3m collaborative project commissioned and funded by the Energy Technologies Institute to create a comprehensive, end-to-end, high-fidelity CCS system modelling tool-kit.

The result of the project is PSE’s gCCS whole-chain CCS system modelling environment.

The importance of system modelling

The gCCS environment, showing a whole-chain simulation

gCCS – the world’s first whole-chain CCS system modelling environment

gCCS is the world’s first modelling environment for end-to-end modelling of whole CCS chains.

It provides a high-fidelity modelling capability for all key operations, from power generation in various forms to injection, and caters for both steady-state and dynamic (transient) analysis.

gCCS is constructed on PSE’s powerful gPROMS advanced modelling platform, and benefits from the many advantages of gPROMS, including world-leading custom modelling, optimisation, accurate physical properties and robust solution of large-scale problems.

Project services

In the high-pressure environment of commercial projects, engineers do often not have time to develop the modelling expertise required to construct complex models.

Recognising this, PSE also provides extensive project services for CCS applications. These typically involve constructing the required models, providing these to the project team and then supporting their application in investigating scenarios while transferring modelling know-how to the project engineers.

Working collaboratively

As befits a product that provides an integrated environment for different stakeholders to test and prove the interaction betwen process components, gCCS was designed and implemented in collaborative project that involved key CCS stakeholders EDF, E.ON, Rolls-Royce and CO2DeepStore, and then evaluated in academic and industrial research projects around the world.

PSE continues this sprit of collaboration by providing an environment in which, in additional to industrial project use:

• researchers can implement models of, for example, new capture processes for dissemination to potential users
• solvent suppliers can test and prove new solvents using high-fidelity capture process models
• operating companies can evaluate new equipment or processes from technology suppliers
• collaborative R&D projects can capture and transfer knowledge generated within projects in the form of models.

PSE is a member of, or works with, many industry and research bodies active in CCS.