Modelling brittle fracture propagation in gas and dense-phase CO2 transportation pipelines

The development and application of a fluid–structure interaction model for simulating the transition of a through-wall defect in pressurised dense (150 bar, 283.15 K) and gas phase (34 bar, 283.15 K) CO2 pipelines into a running brittle fracture is presented. Given the economic incentives, the fracture model is employed to test the suitability of the existing stock of natural gas pipelines with the relatively high ductile to brittle transition temperatures of 0 and −10 °C for transporting CO2 in the terms of their resistance to brittle fracture propagation. The hypothetical but nevertheless realistic scenarios simulated involve both buried and above ground 10 km long, 0.6 m i.d. pipelines. Based on the assumption of no blowout of the surrounding soil upon the formation of the initial leak, the results show that the transition of the leak into a running brittle fracture in buried CO2 pipelines is far more likely as compared to above ground pipelines. In addition, gas phase pipelines are more prone to undergoing a propagating brittle fracture as compared to dense phase pipelines despite the lower operating pressures of the former. Furthermore, counter-intuitively, isolation of the feed flow following the discovery of a leak is shown to facilitate brittle fracture failure. The initial defect geometry on the other hand is shown to have a profound impact on the pipeline's resistance to propagating brittle fractures.