The massive effort required to reduce emissions of CO2 to atmosphere will inevitably require the roll out of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) at many existing and new power stations. In particular a lot of efforts have been focused on capture or storage, while only  few efforts have been put in place to fill the existing gaps of knowledge in CO2 handling and transportation in a safe, efficient and convenient manner. CO2 pipelines are in operation in USA, Europe and North Africa since the 1980’s, however anthropogenic carbon dioxide transport by pipeline brings with it new challenges due to the relevant effects of different impurities coming from flue gases.  It is not a safe assumption to transfer our knowledge of transportation of pure CO2, for Enhanced Hydrocarbon Recovery (EHR) to the design challenges presented by the transportation of anthropogenic carbon dioxide mixtures through densely populated regions of Europe.

This paper will address the Scope of Work of SARCO2 Project “REQUIREMENTS FOR SAFE AND RELIABLE CO2 TRANSPORTATION PIPELINE” presented as a research proposal from an integrated team of pipe producers (Europipe, Salzgitter Mannesmann Line Pipe, V&M Deutschland, Corinth Pipeworks), energy companies (eni, GdF Suez, National Grid) and research centres (Centro Sviluppo Materiali, Salzgitter Mannesmann Forschungsinstitute) with the support of EPRG. The aim is to develop specific requirements and steel pipes design criteria for anthropogenic carbon dioxide transportation pipeline systems, as a first step to create European Guidelines for safe design and operation of anthropogenic CO2 pipeline networks. The most relevant technical topic is the improvement of knowhow and experimental data on fracture control initiation (strong cooling effect  due to defect leaking causing brittle/ ductile transition) to prevent unstable long running shear propagation event developing crack arrest design tools (also including composite reinforced pipes). Furthermore information and data on anthropogenic carbon dioxide dispersion from a suddenly fractured pipeline and leaking vessels will be collected. This last “by product” result will increase the available public data to validate existing models to asses carbon dioxide release (area of interest and consequences) in case of an unlikely event of leak or rupture. This breakthrough approach is intended to deepen our knowledge through extensive and expensive full scale testing in a manner that has never been performed before.