GasOptics has developed a new gas leak detection system that continuously monitors both onshore and offshore installations within the oil and gas industry. Its novel technology is based on an unconventional spectroscopic technique called ‘gas correlation imaging’. This technology turns an invisible gas flow into a visible real-time colour image so that its source can be quickly pinpointed and evaluated and the leak repaired. The risks of explosion, fire, personal injury, production loss and environmental harm are therefore minimised in a more costeffective and time-saving way when compared with traditional leak detection methods.
Preventing gas leaks and emissions that threaten safety and the environment is a significant challenge for the oil and gas industry. The technology development company GasOptics Sweden AB offers new and effective solutions for this problem. The so-called ‘gas camera’ developed by GasOptics shows a coloured image of the plume from a gas leak in real-time, which is overlaid on a regular video image of the facility being monitored. The flow and concentration of the gas leaks are also shown. Several stationary gas cameras can be linked in a system that provides continuous monitoring of a production or processing plant.
With the help of displays and alarms in the control room, plant operators will immediately be able to see and pinpoint any gas leak, determine its size and then initiate repairs. With a system of this kind, safety and environmental control at production and processing plants will be improved and product losses reduced. Compared with traditional leak detection methods, this new gas vision system (GVS) reduces the costs of gas detection and remedial measures.
Launch Programme
GasOptics technology identifies specific gases very quickly and accurately. Plans are already being carried out to launch the first commercial product, a GVS for methane. The development is being undertaken in collaboration with the Statoil-operated, large gas processing plant at Kårstø in Norway. An application for ethylene, for use in the petrochemical industry, is being developed in parallel.
Development of a model that will meet the requirements for continuous monitoring of gas leaks on offshore production platforms has also begun. In this application, which focuses mainly on safety, automatic shut-off functions can also be integrated with the system. Other gases and applications will gradually be added to the product range. One such application is mobile leak detection in processing plants, whereby repairs can be initiated quickly and efficiently.
Advanced Technology
GasOptics’ unique and patent-pending technology is built on 30 years of research experience, first at Chalmers University, Gothenburg and then later at the Lund Institute of Technology (LTH), as well as the knowledge acquired by the group of researchers behind the company. GasOptics technology combines all the winning concepts of remote sensing, passive monitoring, imaging and selectivity and sensitivity in the gas correlation principle.
The unconventional spectroscopic technique where an ultimately high spectral resolution can be combined with a very good signal economy is called ‘gas correlation imaging’. The technique, which is inherently adapted for imaging, disregards conventional spectrometer designs. Instead, it relies on the capability of a gas in a system cell to recognise its own spectral features in the incoming radiation using a unique, analogue parallel processing mode, where the full spectrum is monitored simultaneously and at all image points. One can say that the gas correlation technique relies on the fact that ‘nobody knows the spectrum of a particular gas better than the gas itself.’ This gives high selectivity and high sensitivity; therefore, by combining a thorough spectroscopic knowledge with advanced optical design, the most modern detector and data processing technologies, GasOptics offers real-time visualisation of gas leaks with an extremely userfriendly and intuitive image interpretation that also allows quantification of the gas amounts released. The result is that the petroleum and petrochemical industries now have access to new, very costeffective leak-detection instrumentation.
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