Natural gas processing plants, extraction facilities, gas compressor stations and gas transportation pipelines are critical elements of the natural gas supply chain.
These facilities store, process and transport natural gas through a wide range of equipment over large areas that are difficult to manage efficiently. An important task is to find, limit, or even eliminate natural gas leaks from equipment, piping and fittings. This not only ensures employee safety, but also reduces methane emissions that are harmful to the environment.
Although efficient monitoring of gas emissions in vast gas fields can be challenging, an innovative new combination of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) drones and optical projection technology for aerial gas imaging is proving to be very useful.
AERIAL GAS IMAGING: MAKING SAFETY A PRIORITY
Inspecting and repairing natural gas leaks can pose a significant health and safety risk to maintenance professionals, despite the numerous safety measures taken by inspectors and work crews.
Traditional leak detection and repair (LDAR) equipment often requires operators to be near leaking components or even within the gas cloud from the leak. Donning a respirator and other protective equipment takes time and restricts the operator's ability to move around safely. All of this can increase the potential for unsafe work practices or injury, while limiting the ability to reach components that may be far off the ground or in hard-to-reach areas.
By using optical gas imaging (OGI) cameras to detect gas leaks, users can detect dangerous component leaks while working at safe distances. Today, with new aerial solutions on the market, they can go even further away.
TIME EQUALS MONEY: MINIMIZE TIME DETECTING LEAKS WITH AERIAL GAS IMAGERY
While portable OGI cameras solve many of the safety issues involved with LDAR and increase efficiency, it can still be time-consuming to cover large gas production facilities that do not provide an easy way to move between locations in a system: operators may have to scan an area, drive to the next location and then start the process over again, costing time and money.
With the new aerial OGI technology, a technician scanning for leaks can cover more facilities or locations in much less time compared to manual operation. An aerial OGI operator can scan 4 or 5 facilities in one flight (depending on a variety of factors), a task that can take half a day or a full day.
HOW DO YOU GET THERE?
While a system's facilities or assets within a facility may look close together on a map, an LDAR professional can spend considerable time covering a large facility that may span many square miles with long distances between assets, making for a very long and inefficient day.
For example, an oil and gas operator tasked with inspecting a facility with several large storage tanks might need an hour or more to check each tank with a handheld OGI camera, since doing so requires climbing up the ladder to reach the top of the tank, performing the inspection, and then climbing down the ladder.
With an airborne OGI solution, operators can significantly optimize their processes to perform an LDAR of these tanks by scanning one after another, all during a single flight. In addition, access to some sites in the supply chain can be difficult due to location, restrictive land rights or the large size of the area. Using an aerial solution will greatly reduce the time and effort to reach a location that is often challenging, or impossible, without considerable work.
Finally, there is the simple problem of terrain: some pipelines are built in areas inaccessible to trucks or even vehicles, which creates extreme challenges in inspecting for leaks. Impediments such as rivers, railroads or other obstacles also make aerial OGI more attractive, as you can simply take off from a safe location and get to your site quickly.
A BETTER SOLUTION
While there are many drone options on the market, many of them are not dedicated aerial OGI technologies or drones targeted at the oil and gas industry. Workswell' s GIS-320 aerial OGI solution was built solely for gas detection from the sky.
With Teledyne FLIR's integrated OGI technology, which includes the same cooled infrared detector as in the industry-leading FLIR G620 and Gx320, the GIS-320 was created for the needs of the oil and gas industry, which includes U.S. EPA regulatory compliance. With common features such as FLIR's patented High Sensitivity Mode (HSM) image enhancement function and communications protocol designed specifically for the professional drone operator, the GIS-320 is a valuable addition to an operations LDAR program.
By pairing this Payload with an industrial drone platform, oil and gas operators have the most reliable and highest performing aerial OGI solution on the market. Many industrial drone solutions have key features that aid aerial OGI inspections, such as increased flight time, the ability to hot-swap batteries, predefined mission plans that allow for autonomous inspections, and much more. These aerial OGI solutions with a GIS-320 will greatly increase efficiency for companies looking to reduce emissions at their facilities.
COOLED DETECTOR MAKES THE SMALLEST LEAKS VISIBLE
FLIR OGI cameras can visualize and locate gas leaks that are invisible to the human eye. An optical projection of gas images makes it very easy to continuously analyze installations that are located in remote or hard-to-reach areas. The Workswell GIS-320 with FLIR Thermal contains a cooled indium antimonide (InSb) detector that produces thermal images with a resolution of 320 × 240. With its low F-number (quantitative measure of lens velocity) and high sensitivity to gas detection, the GIS-320 detects the smallest leaks and even meets multiple regulatory standards for sensitivity. Switching the camera to HSM further enhances the camera's detection level so that the smallest gas leaks can be detected. In short, the GIS-320 is very easy to monitor from a safe distance and covers large areas quickly.
CONCLUSION
Whether you are looking to increase worker safety, meet regulatory requirements or simply reduce emissions as better environmental stewards, the applications requiring optical gas imaging technology are broad in the oil and gas industry. Many of them are spread over a small area, making quick and easy access difficult. Using a Workswell GIS-320 with FLIR Thermal and an industrial drone will provide operators with a unique ability to be more efficient in their inspection requirements and more effective in creating safer working environments and reducing emissions.
If you need more information, please contact us so we can help you!
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