Thermal Management in Industrial Carbon Capture and Storage Processes

Dear Colleagues,

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is increasingly viewed as a critical component of the climate mitigation toolkit, especially for high-emitting industrial sectors such as power generation, cement, steel, and chemical production. However, along with the chemical and mechanical challenges of capturing, transporting, and storing CO₂, thermal management emerges as a central and sometimes under-addressed challenge. Efficient thermal control is essential at each stage from CO₂ absorption/desorption and compression to transport, injection, and long-term subterranean storage to ensure energy efficiency, system stability, safety, and cost-effectiveness.

In the capture stage, many solvent- or sorbent-based processes require precise heat input and removal, and heat integration across process units can make or break the economic viability of a system. In compression and transport, thermal effects, frictional heating, and insulating losses must be managed to avoid freezing, hydrate formation, or material stresses. During injection and subsurface migration, temperature gradients can influence CO₂ properties, formation integrity, and caprock stability. Over longer time scales, thermal evolution in the reservoir, due to injection of colder or warmer CO₂ streams, can affect reservoir pressure, phase behaviour, CO₂ plume migration, and trapping efficiency.

This Special Issue aims to bring together state-of-the-art research on thermal design, modelling, control, and optimization strategies for industrial-scale CCS operations. We invite contributions that deepen understanding of heat transfer phenomena, propose novel thermal control systems, enable integration with renewable and waste heat sources, and validate solutions through experiments or field data. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Heat integration and pinch analysis in capture plants;
• Regenerator design and thermal management in solvent/sorbent cycling;
• Advanced heat exchanger technologies;
• Dynamic thermal modelling of capture, compression, and injection chains;
• Thermal effects in CO₂ compression and transport;
• Phase-change and latent-heat approaches integrated into CCS;
• Thermodynamic and fluid–mechanic coupling in injection and subsurface CO₂ migration;
• Thermal-reservoir modelling and temperature-driven flow phenomena;
• Use of waste heat, renewable heat, or thermal storage to support CCS;
• Control strategies and diagnostics for managing temperature excursions;
• Pilot-scale or field-scale validation of thermal management strategies in CCS;
• Life-cycle and exergy-based assessment of thermal systems in CCS operations.

By focusing on thermal issues, this Special Issue seeks to fill a gap in CCS research: the holistic coupling between heat and mass in large-scale CO₂ management. The collected contributions should not only advance theoretical understanding but also guide industrial practice toward more efficient, resilient, and scalable CCS systems.

Dr. Milad Amiri
Guest Editor

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