CO2Flow - Advancing LedaFlow for robust and accurate multiphase flow simulations to enable transport and injection of CO₂

LedaFlow Technologies has formed a research consortium with energy companies ConocoPhillips, TotalEnergies, Equinor, ExxonMobil Technology & Engineering, Wintershall DEA and Petrobras, as well as sub-suppliers Kongsberg Digital, SINTEF Industry and SINTEF Energy Research, to further enhance its multiphase flow simulator technology for transport and injection of CO₂. Through the CO2Flow project, the consortium aims to analyse opportunities for safe transport and injection of CO₂, both with and without impurities, with the objective of accelerating carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology development.

The improved LedaFlow software is expected to give more accurate CO₂ simulations, which will make it possible to reduce design margins and significantly decrease investment costs of CO₂ transport and injection systems while maintaining operational safety. Such precise predictions are indeed essential for energy and cost-efficient operations and to minimize risk through simulations of various operational scenarios.

SINTEF will contribute with its world-class multiphase modelling expertise and CO₂ flow facility. The experimental facility, DeFACTO – Demonstration of Flow Assurance for CO₂ Transport Options – will be used to generate relevant data. DeFACTO circulates CO₂ through a 90-metre-deep U-tube loop, which is instrumented with over 100 high-precision, fast-response pressure and temperature sensors, enabling it to measure pressure waves with a high degree of accuracy. In addition, data previously generated in the DeFACTO flow loop are made available to the project.

CO2Flow will directly benefit from technology transfer and expertise on multiphase flow modelling developed at SINTEF’s Multiphase Flow Laboratory together with the oil and gas industry and LedaFlow over the past 20 years.

The outcomes from CO2Flow are expected to accelerate the global deployment of CCS as the participants may put project results into industrial use immediately. The project results will be made available to the industry via releases of the “LedaFlow Engineering 1D Software” commercialized by Kongsberg Digital when the software has reached industrial quality.

CO2Flow is an innovation project co-funded by the Research Council of Norway through the CLIMIT Programme – Norway’s national program for research, development, and demonstration of CCS technology (project number 336939).