Numerical simulation of CO2 dispersion from punctures and ruptures of buried high-pressure dense phase CO2 pipelines with experimental validation

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) presents an option for significantly reducing the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) released into the atmosphere and mitigating the effects of climate change. Pipelines are considered to be the most likely method for transporting captured CO2 and their safe operation is of paramount importance as their contents are likely to be in the region of several thousand tonnes and CO2 poses a number of concerns upon release due to its unusual physical properties. To this end, National Grid initiated the COOLTRANS (CO2 Liquid Pipeline Transportation) research programme to consider the pipeline transportation of high-pressure dense phase CO2. Part of this work involved the development of a mathematical model for predicting the dispersion of pure CO2 following the venting, puncture, or rupture, of such a transportation pipeline during normal operational conditions. In this paper, we describe the use of a computational fluid dynamic (CFD) tool that can be used to numerically simulate the near-field sonic dispersion from such releases, above and below ground. The model is shown to qualitatively and quantitatively reproduce observed experimental results. Validated flows at the top of the crater formed by below ground releases presented here for a range of scenarios provide the basis for developing robust source conditions for use in CFD studies of far-field dispersion, and for use with pragmatic quantified risk assessment (QRA) models.