Transportation of CO2 is rapidly growing, with market indications showing that thousands of kilometers of CO2 pipelines will be constructed for Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) or Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR). CCS/CCUS is seen as a key pillar in our collective ability to reach net-zero commitments.

For these pipelines to be rolled out safely important considerations such as risk of running ductile fractures (RDF) and rapid crack propagation must be designed out. This of increased importance for steel pipelines due to decompression behavior of CO2 posing an increased risk. It is important in the design of a steel pipeline that crack arresting is considered, this can be achieved through the use of composite crack arrestors.

Reinforced Thermoplastics Pipes (RTPs) is an alternative technology to steel that makes of non-metallic pipes reinforced with a high strength reinforcement, usually in the form of a fiber or wire wound helically along the pipe. These are commonly referred to as composite pipes. RTPs are analogous to composite crack arrestors in many ways and they can be thought of as pipes containing such crack arrestors continuously along their length.

In this paper Baker Hughes will demonstrate from literature review and full scale testing, the resistance of RTPs to RCP/RDF failure modes.