Area Methane Detection Using Work Trucks

Lead Proponent

Petroleum Technology Alliance Canada (PTAC)

Project Background

This project included the demonstration, field testing and validation of an advanced proprietary methane detection technology mounted on work trucks to cost-effectively identify and measure methane emissions spanning wide areas in oil and gas facilities in Alberta.

Data from the trucks was fed to a cloud computing platform for processing and identification of leaks. It was anticipated that truck-based sensors would provide a low cost, efficient solution to manage field-wide ambient air monitoring, which would reduce methane emissions from unplanned emissions and could potentially remove the need for interval-based leak inspections.

Results

The project demonstrated the use of advanced methane sensors mounted on oil and gas producer Encana’s existing service trucks. The compact, lightweight sensors from mAIRsure are comprised of a novel open-path cavity ring-down spectroscopy (CRDS) sensor for point measurements of methane concentration, along with analytics, to determine leak locations and magnitudes (using methane concentration, meteorological, and geospatial data).

The project achieved its primary goal to obtain a valuable dataset of emissions across multiple disparate sites at Encana’s facilities, while also providing firsthand experience of operations with the mAIRsure system. In addition, techno-economic analysis indicated that the return on investment (ROI) for this project is less expensive than adherence to existing reporting protocols and has a greater frequency of coverage (approximately $200-500 per annum per site). Finally, controlled release tests validated the full sensor system's ability to accurately detect and quantify leaks of different sizes, while data analysis from these tests provided an initial verification of the full leak detection system.