LedaFlow Technologies Forms Carbon Capture & Storage Research Consortium

31.01.2023

LedaFlow Technologies has formed a research consortium with energy companies ConocoPhillips, TotalEnergies, Equinor, and ExxonMobil Technology & Engineering, as well as sub-suppliers Kongsberg Digital, SINTEF Industry, and SINTEF Energy Research, to enhance its multiphase transport simulator technology for transport and injection of CO₂.

The consortium, called the CO2Flow project, aims to analyze opportunities for safe transport and injection of CO₂ both with and without impurities to accelerate carbon capture and storage technology development. The consortium also aims to contribute to accelerating the global deployment of CCS, as the partners can put project results into industrial use and benefit from the improved functionalities through more optimal design and reliable operation.

Accurate simulations will enable reduced design margins and decreased investment costs of CO₂ transport and injection systems while maintaining operational safety. Precise predictions are also essential for energy and cost-efficient operations and will help minimize risk through simulations of various functional scenarios.

Building on Kongsberg Digital’s commercialization model success which has been in place for LedaFlow since 2010, Kongsberg Digital will deliver world-class industrial software in a secure, user-friendly, and reliable way which can also be deployed on digital twins to operate assets.

The consortium’s research partners SINTEF Industry and SINTEF Energy Research will provide access to world-class resources and information regarding multiphase flow modeling and experimental facilities with CO2 flow competence. Equinor, TotalEnergies and SINTEF Energy Research have been collecting experimental good data for CO₂ injection in the DeFacto flow loop since 2016. The experimental data has been shared with the consortium for model improvement.

By harnessing the resources and data available through the four participating energy companies, LedaFlow Technologies gains access to a vast range of organizations with net zero ambitions.

“Together, our aim is to qualify LedaFlow technology for industrial use by securing simulation accuracy and robustness. The goal is to drive down the design and associated costs for CCS operations and accelerate its broader implementation within the energy mix. This contributes to making cleaner energy more affordable,” says Jan Gerhard Norstrøm, Managing Director at LedaFlow Technologies DA.

LedaFlow Technologies’ mission is to utilize the expertise of its partners to ensure the continuous development of LedaFlow products and bring to the industry the best available tool for multiphase flow simulation.

LedaFlow development was initiated in the early 2000s by ConocoPhillips, TotalEnergies, and SINTEF with the ambition to develop a simulator closer to actual physics for oil and gas applications. Since 2017, under the leadership of TotalEnergies, thanks to the CO2FACT JIP (a CLIMIT Demo project), the CO₂ transport module has been developed bringing LedaFlow to the forefront of CO₂ research. It is now providing the industry with the simulator software needed to make CCS a reality.

The project is supported by the CLIMIT Programme – Norway’s national program for research, development, and demonstration of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.

LedaFlow

Why is LedaFlow a good match for the simulation of CO2? LedaFlow is built using a multifield approach. It solves the mass equations for all fields, while the energy and momentum conservation equations are solved for each zone, summed over all fields in the zone (continuous phase with the dispersed phases it contains). This enables phase change from all fields with the possibility of having both condensation and evaporation simultaneously, enabling the accurate simulation of critical transient events like the rapid phase changes observed in CO₂ flow.

Visit ledaflow.com for more information.

KONGSBERG DIGITAL

Kongsberg Digital is a provider of next-generation software and digital solutions to customers within maritime, oil and gas, and renewables and utilities. The company consists of more than 1000 software experts with leading competence within the internet of things, smart data, artificial intelligence, maritime simulation, automation and autonomous operations.

KONGSBERG

KONGSBERG is a leading global technology corporation delivering mission-critical systems and solutions with extreme performance for customers that operate under extremely challenging conditions. We work with nations, businesses and research environments to push the boundaries of technology development in industries such as space, offshore and energy, merchant marine, defense and aerospace, and more. KONGSBERG has over 11,000 employees located in more than 40 countries, creating a total revenue of NOK 27.5bn in 2021.