The threat posed by a gas doesn’t change from industry to industry, but the circumstances do. Drawing on cross-industry experience in CO₂ detection, this presentation will examine what CCUS operators can learn from established gas safety practice.
For many years, particularly in maritime transport, O2 depletion detection was deemed acceptable to infer a dangerous breathing environment when it came to CO2. This is technically flawed: you can have dangerous CO2 levels before O2 drops below alarm thresholds. Direct CO2 monitoring is the only safe way to monitor a safe atmosphere for this hazard.
We will cover historic CO2 safety incidents and explain how the gas properties lead to dangerous situations and what detection can be put in place to reduce the risk for plants, personnel, and the environment. With the increased demand for carbon capture, storage, and transport to meet the climate goals, there is also a need for safe systems and procedures for handling CO2 as part of a carbon capture value chain and for knowledge of what is going on when CO2 systems leak and who is at risk.