PSS Router is an integrated routing application within the PSS II Simulator. This techno-economic simulator has been developed specifically to address questions relating to the deployment of CO2 capture and storage in Belgium. A spread algorithm is used for least-cost raster routing instead of the more commonly used Dijkstra algorithm, which is generally slower for raster routing because of its calculation-intense route sorting. Instead of the traditional 8 directions, 32 directions (up to three raster points further) can be chosen from a certain raster point with PSS Router to create smoother and more realistic routes. A matrix of cost factors is built to calculate pipeline investment costs using material, labour, right of way and miscellaneous (engineering etc.) costs. Vector data is added to simulate objects such as roads and rivers. This combination of raster and vector cost data allows fast, realistic and detailed routing and cost calibration.

PSS Router has the ability of creating pipeline networks in two different ways. A first method is creating networks within one time step. Thus, not only an extra CO2-source can be connected to an existing pipeline, but one new source is able to connect to multiple CO2-sinks and vice versa. In PSS Router this is limited to two sources and one sink. Higher configurations would demand an unrealistic calculation time. The second method does not suffer from these limitations. It simulates the building of a network over different time steps using backward discounting, which results in enlarging existing pipelines for joint use. This method introduces the concept of limited foresight for simulating realistic, semi-optimised pipeline networks.