In the context of negative emissions and decarbonizing industry, carbon capture and storage (CCS) is an important element of the climate policy of Switzerland.. The search for domestic storage sites is ongoing; in the meantime, there could be a possibility of collecting Swiss CO2 and sending it to deep-water ports for shipping to permanent storage sites.
In the present work, a feasibility and cost estimate analysis has been carried out for the development of a “collection network” (similar to a distribution grid for natural gas) to connect to Switzerland’s largest CO2 emitters on the one hand and to transmission pipelines on the other hand by 2030.
Two different options are considered for the transport of the CO2 from the emitters up to the delivery points: gaseous and dense phase transport. Several possible collection system configurations are considered.
The optimization analysis of the CO2 collection network, to define the pipeline diameter and the number/size of compressor stations is based on the minimization of investment (CAPEX) and operating (OPEX) costs, by evaluating all the possible alternative transport configurations. The optimization technique is based on a transportation cost-index (ATCI, actualized transport cost index) for the unit volume of transported gas, which is estimated for all the investigated alternatives. The alternative having the lowest transportation cost-index is the “optimum configuration” recommended for selection.
The collecting network is designed to transport the captured CO2 stream up to two delivery points, from where a long transmission pipeline will deliver the CO2 to a shipping terminal.
The considered delivery points are in the Basel area for transmission towards deep-water ports on the North Sea and in the Canton of Wallis (in Collombey) for transmission towards Italy.
