Background
Why impurities matter
The scientific context behind SPECS: what happens when CO2 streams from different sources share the same storage complex.
About SPECS
Making CO2 storage safer for mixed-source streams
To meet the EU’s challenging carbon-emission-reduction objectives, Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is set to scale to industrial levels in the coming years. As capture capacity grows, storage operators will increasingly inject CO2 streams combined from different sources — each carrying its own mix of impurities. These impurities can pose specific challenges for the safe design and operation of CO2 transport and storage networks, and Directive 2009/31/EC requires that they remain below levels that risk transport and storage integrity, the environment, or human health.
While the effect of impurities on CO2 transport (corrosion, flow assurance) has been widely studied, their impact on the integrity of the storage complex itself — wells, reservoir rock, and caprock — has received far less attention. SPECS is built to close that gap.
The SPECS project unravels the impacts of impurities system-wide, from the injection well to the caprock, and delivers protective, mitigation, and monitoring solutions, together with guidance for technology providers, regulators, and standardisation bodies. The overall ambition is to facilitate access to storage for more CO2 stream mixes and improve the economics of the CCS chain.
Project concept
An integrative approach to the storage complex
SPECS takes an integrative view of the entire CO2 storage complex — from the injection well, through the near-wellbore region and reservoir, all the way to the caprock — assessing how impurities affect each component and the system as a whole.
From the wells to the caprock
Cross-section
The storage complex with mixed CO2 streams arriving from different industrial sources, the injection and monitoring wells, the plume in the reservoir, and the caprock above it.
Three strategic objectives
Research cycle
The three strategic objectives sit around the storage complex, driven by a cycle of new laboratory data, enhanced THMC multi-scale modelling, and the integration of both.