(110g) Detection and Measurement of Fugitive Methane Gas Emission Using Infrared Imaging Camera I

The increasing amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is believed to be one of the causes of global warming. It has given rise to the awareness of switching to other alternative energy sources that could result in less emissions. Natural gas is considered as one of the fossil fuel substitution due to its lower CO2 emission per unit of energy combusted. Nevertheless, methane (CH4) gas itself is a potential greenhouse gas. Hence, monitoring and controlling the methane emissions from natural gas industry is important.

A method using passive infrared camera is proposed to detect and monitor the fugitive methane emissions. This technique is considered to overcome the problem related to the current technology used, i.e., the ?gas sniffer', because it is more efficient, robust and it has the ability to visualize the methane gas plume from the source of the leak. However, this technology still lacks in determination and estimation of the emissions of fugitive methane gas as it only gives the temperature profile of the plume, not the concentration.

The purpose of this research is to bridge that gap by creating a correlation between the temperature and concentration of the methane gas. This is done by performing experiments and vapor dispersion modeling. The experiments are carried out to get the temperature profile of the methane gas using the infrared camera whereas the vapor dispersion model is developed to obtain the concentration distribution of the gas plume. Different environmental and meteorological conditions will be considered in developing the gas dispersion model. The proposed research is novel and has never been performed before, therefore the result will be confirmed by using a vapor analyzer in order to measure the methane concentration.