Hardware and instrumentation to investigate massive releases of dense phase CO2
Résumé
CCS (carbon capture and storage) is seen as a possibility to mitigate the global warming effect. The practical implementation of this technique faces a few challenges like safety issues. It is wondered if a massive release affecting the pipeline (may be the most vulnerable part of the CCS chain) would not lead to a disaster remembering what happened in Africa about 28 years ago (about Nyos Lake accident see Eos, 2009). Few experimental observations of large-scale CO2 releases have been made, and the physics and thermochemistry involved are not fully understood, even if considerable progress has been made theoretically.(2) In this paper, the experimental techniques used to investigate this specific problem are described and illustrated with some key results extracted from various projects. Innovative techniques were employed to control the mass flowrate, blowdown, nearfield, and farfield dispersion in the atmosphere. A 2m(3) spherical vessel able to store up to 1000kg of CO2 at a pressure above 8MPa was used. Dense CO2 was allowed to spill out via a 50mm pipe. The temperature, CO2 concentration, and density field of the outside cloud were monitored using thermocouples and concentration probes. Among other results, it was in particular shown that when the mass flowrate is large enough, body forces become significant forcing the cloud to stay on the ground.
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