Name
102: Identification and Flow Rate Estimation of Methane from Satellite Imagery
Date & Time
Wednesday, May 11, 2022, 10:00 AM - 10:45 AM
Adam Silva
Description

Our global community is beginning to take action in our race to remediate our species’ impact on the environment through the reduction of CO2 and CH4. With CH4 being the most abundant component in Natural Gas it is prudent that local distribution companies (LDC) can identify and mitigate leaks on their distribution networks.

Research on methane leak identification has grown over the last decade with innovations at larger scales to identify leaks at refineries, for example. Amongst all the strategies that exist, Satellite detection has been at the forefront for its ability to cover large areas quickly. Using satellites with hyperspectral imaging tuned to detect methane, companies have been able to build out platforms capable of accurately identifying and measuring large methane leaks in non-diverse environments, such as the Permian basin. However, using these same techniques in more urban environments where there is significantly more noise and local weather fluctuations has not been thoroughly explored.

In the presentation, we will discuss the problems encountered in applying the developed methodologies to more urban LDC environments in relation to both the identification and mass flow rate estimation. We will specifically address the difficulties of leak source identification, duplicate leak identification, inflated satellite measured methane concentrations and overestimation of mass flow rate.

Session takeaways:

  • Remotely grading and determining flow rate of Natural Gas leaks on LDCs.
  • How satellite imagery is used to identify methane leaks.
  • How the satellite imagery is used to quantify methane leaks.
Submission Type
Breakout Session
Evaluation
Presentation 1