Carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) will play a critical role in delivering a lower-carbon future. While this market is still maturing, there have been some very positive advancements over the past decade. The challenge now is to accelerate this progress, as the volume of projects that have moved beyond early engineering stages is still relatively small.

Today, there are around 45 commercial carbon capture facilities in operation globally, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), with a total annual capture capacity of more than 50mn t/y. By comparison, the number of proposed facilities at early engineering or study phase exceeds 700 globally.

CCUS projects are often technically complex, expensive and require significant financial incentives. It is essential to develop technical and commercial solutions that enable operators to safely capture CO₂, transport and permanently store it, or unlock value by re-using carbon for alternative purposes. Wood is committed to supporting this effort, particularly in regions and markets that are heavily investing in CCUS.

A good example is the recent establishment of an Energy Transition Hub in the United Arab Emirates. This team will provide access to subject matter experts with technical, strategic and economic insight to help them plan, design and deliver low-carbon developments including CCUS projects.

Designing world-class CCUS infrastructure
Earlier this year, Wood announced completion of the front-end engineering design (FEED) for Saudi Aramco’s Accelerated Carbon Capture and Sequestration (ACCS) project. This will be the largest carbon capture hub in the world once complete, capturing emissions from Aramco’s gas plant facilities near Jubail, on the east side of Saudi Arabia.

Wood’s scope on the project includes the design of the greenfield dehydration and compression facilities and a large gathering and transport network, including a 200+ km dense liquid phase CO₂ pipeline to the injection site. The project will transport and sequester over 9mn t/y of CO₂ by 2027. By 2035, Aramco plans to store up to 14mn t/y, significantly contributing to the Kingdom’s goal of capturing 44mn t/y by 2035. The ACCS FEED completion will provide crucial learnings and proofs for emission reduction strategies.

Looking beyond the Middle East, Wood has been involved in more than one third of the world’s carbon capture projects. This includes the Humber and Teesside industrial clusters in the UK, as well as Canada’s flagship carbon capture, transport and storage project led by the Pathways Alliance. The Wood team has completed CCS studies for over 150 carbon capture facilities worldwide. Based on this global experience, we observe some key themes when it comes to planning, designing and executing ground-breaking CCUS projects.

Developing a hub approach to scale up CCUS infrastructure
Two key challenges to scaling up carbon capture projects are complexity and expense. An emerging solution to these barriers is the hub or industrial cluster approach. A CCUS hub is where emitters from multiple facilities capture CO₂ and then utilise shared transport and storage infrastructure. This model helps to provide economies of scale and reduces costs for an emitter, as investment is shared between multiple asset owners and emitters.

However, while the move to hubs can bring significant value from a commercial perspective, there are some unique challenges when it comes to capturing and transporting CO₂ from a cluster of emitters. Multiple emitters increase the complexity of the CO₂ stream and the level of impurities within it. The composition of individual CO₂ streams will vary based on the type of emitter, the capture technology deployed and the fuel source. The impurities from different sources and capture processes create a ‘cocktail’ of different components – which may comprise non-condensable, toxic compounds, metals, carry-over of chemicals and more. Various types and quantities of impurities can affect the properties and behaviour of CO₂ streams significantly, and some are highly active which can chemically react, creating a corrosive environment and causing asset integrity issues. As a result, setting the fluid and system specification for a safe and cost-effective CCUS chain design is essential, and it is critical that the specifications set around maximum tolerance limits on contaminants are not exceeded during the operation phase.

Two key challenges to scaling up carbon capture projects are complexity and expense. An emerging solution to these barriers is the hub or industrial cluster approach.

Understanding how to handle and safely transport CO₂-rich fluid will be critical in developing a successful CCUS hub. However, despite the importance of this area, there are still some knowledge gaps in assessing the impact of CO₂ specification on CCUS design and operations. International standards address different elements of the CCUS chain, but none cover the full chain. There are also differences between the leading CO₂ authorities regarding the potential issues and challenges of implementing those standards. To address this issue, Wood is leading a joint industry project (JIP) involving a mix of industry and research experts, to create industry guidelines for setting CO₂ specifications for effective and economic carbon capture, transport and storage chains. Wood will present the findings of the JIP at the upcoming ADIPEC conference in Abu Dhabi this year.

The role of data, information and digital solutions for CCS
Utilising advanced digital solutions and emerging technologies will enable future CCS projects to optimise the design, improve performance, and increase the reliability and safety of CCUS systems, while reducing environmental impacts and costs. Wood’s digital solutions are currently deployed on the world’s largest CO₂ injection plant to monitor the system in real-time and to plan and optimise future operations. The tool models the flow of the CO₂-rich stream from the outlet of the compressor trains, through the pipeline network and manifolds into the injection wells. This model can accurately capture the behaviour of the CCS system and has been running online 24/7 for several years while being continuously benchmarked against real operational data.

Looking to the future, CCUS infrastructure will operate with minimal human intervention. This will require the simplification and tailoring of existing processes to address specific risks. Projects are planned for deployment at offshore or remote, unpopulated areas to mitigate human risk impact and necessitate tailored digital solutions for unattended asset management and monitoring.

Multi-stakeholder management
CCUS projects are highly interconnected and interdependent – many stakeholders are involved in the lifecycle of a hub project, often with differing objectives. Stakeholders can include emitters, trading and supply operators, investors, owners, technology providers, contractors and government. Stakeholder management with such diverse interests across the value chain can be a challenge for CCUS projects. Without line of sight of the overall goals of the hub, there are risks around non-compliance of design, budget increases, schedule overruns or carbon impurities getting into the transport and storage system, which can lead to project delays or cancellations. Wood provides integrated project management team services on behalf of all stakeholders for major hub projects including the Net Zero Teesside programme and the Northern Endurance Partnership in the UK. Insight from these programmes have been incorporated into the project planning and execution of Aramco’s ACCS hub to help reduce risk.

In addition to stakeholder management, the handover and capital commitment from design to execute and operation is crucial. A well-established design, schedule, cost estimate and project execution plan is essential to support successful handover and delivery in the subsequent ‘execute and operate’ phases of a project.

There is lots of momentum globally in the CCUS market. We are very optimistic about the important role that CCUS will play in helping to drive a lower-carbon and ultimately a net-zero future.

• Further reading: ‘On the horizon: Norwegian CCUS vision soon to be made real’. Despite cost overruns, Norway’s Northern Lights carbon capture, use and storage (CCUS) project is heading towards start-up in 2025, with a first-phase capacity of 1.5mn t/y rising to 5mn t/y in the second phase. That schedule puts the scheme in the running to be among Europe’s first large-scale CCUS projects to start up.
• Reducing CO₂ must remain the priority for policymakers; removing it from the atmosphere and permanently storing it can only complement decarbonisation, not replace it, explains Fabiola De Simone, policy expert with climate advocacy organisation Carbon Market Watch. .