Comparison of Advanced Detection Techniques of Methane Leaks in Industrial Gas Systems

Methane leakage from industrial gas systems is an important safety and climate problem, and the detection of it should be quick and reliable under a variety of operating conditions. This article compares the advanced techniques for detecting methane leaks - ultrasonic sensors, optical gas imaging (OGI), unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) equipped with special payloads, and laser-based sensors - based on the evidence from the approaches of virtual simulation of gas fields and reported field trials. Performance is measured against sensitivity, accuracy, range, cost and tolerance to the environment. Findings show that ultrasonic sensors are a practical and low-cost screening approach which could be limited due to noise and wind influence (Lee et al., 2023). OGI allows rapid localization of the visuals for conducting facility inspection and LDAR workflows, but the performance may be affected by adverse meteorological conditions (Ravikumar et al., 2017; Zimmerle et al., 2020). UAV-based monitoring allows coverage improvement and fewer workers exposed to risk in large assets (Hollenbeck et al., 2021), while laser-based sensing has the highest sensitivity for long-range detection (Kamieniak et al., 2015). The study concludes with the recommendations for deployment and future research.