Advanced Methane Measurements using Ground-based and UAV-based Sensors

Dean Jenkins, Encana
17-ARPC-01

Piloting innovative sensing technologies provides industry with effective approaches to identifying and reducing emissions from fugitive equipment leaks, thus reducing the overall cost impact and contributing to large scale emissions reductions expected from fugitive equipment sources.

It’s critical that companies pilot new sensing technologies to find near-term solutions to providing the most cost effective methods for methane detection. Effective methane monitoring solutions should assist industry by reducing manual inspection requirements and cost by alerting operations personnel only of circumstances where detected leakage is high enough to warrant it, thus potentially addressing super emitters as they occur. Fixed ground sensors can potentially be placed at high risk sites for continuous monitoring and integration of mobile UAV sensors for production sites and facilities, which provide the ability to survey large areas in comparatively shorter amounts of time than manual surveys and incorporate such surveys into more regular operations.

Pilots such as this one can potentially play a role in demonstrating sensing technologies as acceptable methods of LDAR to meet regulatory requirements.  The benefit to industry increases the sooner the piloting of these types of technologies takes place, while there is still time to influence the accepted methods of LDAR within the emerging regulatory frameworks.

Report

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