As companies in high-emissions sectors strive to comply with environmental and safety regulations imposed by governments and regulatory agencies, emissions monitoring and quantifying technologies are in high demand.

A leader in the field, Canadian technology company Telops has been developing thermal infrared imaging solutions as a cost-effective answer for clients looking to reduce emitted methane and other greenhouse gases. During a webinar on Aug. 25, Telops field applications engineer Ben Saute explained how these infrared imaging solutions, specifically hyperspectral imaging, work in the field to benefit operators to monitor, quantify and ultimately reduce harmful emissions, primarily methane.

“The primary message here is that we are very confident that infrared hyperspectral imaging can be a valuable tool for gas leak detection, identification and quantification,” Saute said. “The Hyper-Cam is a unique high capability instrument for gas analysis that designed to be easy to integrate and easy to operate.”

Since the company’s inception in 2000, Quebec City-based Telops has been offering practical technology solutions in the optics and photonics field. Today, its portfolio includes systems that focus on manufacturing and application of high-end thermal infrared imaging solutions.

The Hyper-Cam is an advanced passive infrared hyperspectral imaging system developed by Telops that combines high spatial and spectral resolution. It provides real-time radiometrically calibrated data for gas and mineral detection and identification.

“We feel strongly that it can be a cost-effective tool for reducing methane emissions and increasing regulatory compliance,” he added. “We continue to challenge our instrumentation and data processing routines with measurement campaigns in real world environments.”

The Hyper-Cam

The market is expanding for emissions detecting and mitigating technology systems as oil and gas companies rush to get a handle on unwanted greenhouse gases coming from their operations. However, this can also make it difficult to understand which products serve each site best.

Through conferences and workshops, Telops researched the best way to meet as many operators’ emissions regulation needs as possible, according to Saute.

“What has become clear to us…is that there’s no single technology that's going to be able to do it all when it comes to methane analysis, no single technology is going to allow us to analyze the wide range of leak sizes that we can encounter,” he said.

“So, the thought now within the industry is that we’re going to need to think about an array of sensors or a technology toolkit that can allow us to identify and quantify emissions of different sizes,” he continued.

Telops set out to create such a “technology toolkit” with the Hyper-Cam portfolio. With two installments—the ground-based Hyper-Cam Mini xLW and airborne Hyper-Cam Airborne Mini—the products allow for safe and noninvasive detection, identification and quantification of volatile organic compounds.

Both the Mini xLW and Airborne Mini systems provide real-time chemical imaging and emissions quantification from systems as far away as 5 km through the generation of automated detection reports. The reports can show what leaks are present and which gasses are emitted, as well as how much gas there is—that is, how big of a problem the leak is.

“The Hyper-Cam is essentially a staring Fourier transform infrared imaging spectrometer with integrated calibration sources,” Saute said, “so we provide calibrated, spectral radiance data cubes.”

Through a high level of hyperspectral imaging, the system collects pertinent emissions data that can be applied for gas detection, identification and quantification.

“Our hyperspectral imaging system measures a scene and collects a three-dimensional data construct, which we call a hyper cube,” Saute continued. “Essentially what we're doing is collecting a set of images across a series of narrow spectral wave bands and then stacking those images to form a continuous three-dimensional structure.”

Experimental results

French operator TotalEnergies (then Total) employed both the Mini xLW and Airborne Mini to perform a large-scale release test in collaboration with Telops. The test would identify the suitability of the hyperspectral imaging technology, as well as determine a variety of methane leak rates in the production environment.

During this test, the ground measurements were able to provide precise methane quantification images through excellent visualization capabilities.

“Total is very invested in sort of pushing the limits of gas quantification technology, so they decided to explore using multiple hyper cam instruments to perform a 3D reconstruction of the gas cloud and its concentration distributions,” Saute said.

In another example, the Hyper-Cam identified how much methane was in a plume from the ventilation outlet of a barn housing 18 cows. By dividing the approximately 30 ppm-m of emission with the 2 m-wide plume, the system calculated approximately 15 ppm of methane in the plume.

From there, the user could identify where the leaks were coming from and prioritize their mitigation efforts.

“The ability of the Hyper-Cam to provide large area chemical imaging is going to be critical to identifying leaks from utility scale, natural gas distribution systems, active and abandoned oil and gas infrastructure and even leaks from natural methane reservoirs,” Saute said.

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