Context and objectives
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