An autonomous methane gas sensor on a silicon microchip

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Methane is an attractive energy source. As the simplest and lightest hydrocarbon, it burns clean, without the**"soup" of long-chain hydrocarbons, sulfur oxides, or nitrous oxides present in other fuels. As an energy source,**it releases less CO2 than coal. Methane is the major component of natural gas and is therefore important to**much of the international energy industry. Natural gas is used for electricity generation and home heating in**many parts of the world, and many jurisdictions have been mandated to switch from coal to natural gas.**Although not so well-known, methane's greenhouse effects are ~70 times more powerful than those of CO2. It**is currently the second largest contributor to the global greenhouse effect, and its atmospheric concentration is**believed to have doubled since pre-industrial times. Rapid detection of fugitive emissions from gas production**and transportation facilities is a critical part of future efforts to minimize the release of GHG into the**atmosphere. The proposal aims to develop a prototype micro-optical methane sensor that would be small and**cheap enough to form a monitoring system that would enable the detection of methane releases over large**geographic areas. By incorporating the device onto a silicon chip using standard procedures in**microelectronics, it should be relatively simple to mass produce. The basic idea is to deploy so-called**micro-optical "ring resonator" technology with temperature stabilization in order to sense low levels of**methane with a small, inexpensive device. This Engage grant will allow the University of Alberta team to work**on the fundamental science of microphotonics for methane sensing and use their results toward the**development of a prototype that would solve an important problem for Campbell Scientific a Canadian leader**in environmental monitoring and control solutions.