Europe: How to cut methane emissions through advanced gas leak detection

With increasing methane emissions recognized as a significant factor in global warming, the world is waking up to the dangers it poses. In response to these risks, the European Union have put in place ambitious reduction goals, together with stringent legislation to ensure emitting organizations identify the source of leaks and take action to fix them promptly.

Natural gas remains an important part of the energy mix and is a prime candidate, bridging the gap between highly polluting coal and non-fossil, renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and green hydrogen. However, natural gas carries a significant environmental penalty in the form of one of its major constituents.

To support industrial companies, effective, accurate and rapid methods of detecting methane emissions and natural gas leaks are required.

The issue is that traditional methods used to detect gas leaks have failed to meet these criteria. Slow, and lacking the accuracy and sensitivity required, they have also been particularly bad at detecting small or hidden leaks. 

Relying on handheld analog detectors carried by technicians across the suspected area of the gas leak, the devices need time to calibrate on site and have only a low detection rate. This requires users to walk slowly over the investigation area, slowing the process down considerably, while the need to add test data manually further increases the time to analyze a potential leak.

ABB’s newly developed gas leak detection system is based on a high sensitivity gas analyzer capable of measuring and reporting methane and ethane concentrations several times per second. The analyzer uses the Off-Axis Integrated Cavity Output Spectroscopy (OA-ICOS) principle, which utilizes tunable laser sources that produces light at a selected wavelengths to interact with the gases being analyzed. 

Each laser beam enters a highly reflective mirrored cavity, where it is reflected thousands of times before exiting onto a photodetector. This creates a very long optical path many kilometres in length. The enhanced optical path length allows the use of telecommunications-grade near-infrared diode lasers, the most reliable, rugged and longest lifetime lasers available and yield very strong absorption signals. As a result, the measurements of the target gases are recorded quickly and with extremely high sensitivity, precision, and accuracy.

The OA-ICOS method offers a sensitivity over 1,000 times higher than conventional leak detection technologies, allowing the analyzer to detect single parts per billion (ppb) variations of the target gases over ambient levels rapidly. In turn, this allows detection of methane emissions and natural gas leaks quickly from long distances, a feat that legacy technologies cannot achieve.

In addition to these benefits, the OA-ICOS technology is also highly robust, enabling its deployment in multiple formats that enable data to be collected in a variety of ways including on foot, mounted on a vehicle or aircraft, or used in conjunction with a UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) such as a drone. With the ability to collect data faster without sacrificing sensitivity or accuracy, the technology provides advantages over older technologies.