A Hybrid Multi-Path Optical Remote Sensing System for Monitoring Fugitive Areal Emission of Methane

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Methane is the 2nd most important greenhouse gas contributing to climate change after CO2. Despite the fact that fugitive emissions from landfills, agriculture, and oil & gas operations contribute most of the total emission, challenges are present in characterizing and quantifying such emissions due to highly heterogeneous concentration distribution, and highly variable flux over large spatial scales. Furthermore, conventional methane emission monitoring technologies have inherent limitations for capturing large-scale, heterogeneous fugitive emissions, and the applicability of some of the technologies is extremely limited under harsh weather conditions or at remote locations. Besides, the emission factors that have been entered into the emission inventories are of large uncertainties for fugitive sources due to the lack of monitoring technologies, which is particularly challenging for uncommon sources such as tailings ponds and mining face in Alberta. Emissions factors are incomplete or even unavailable for the oil sands area, despite that they are large methane sources and hence have to be included in developing the Canadian emission inventory for methane. This research aims to develop a novel, hybrid, multi-path optical remote sensing (ORS) method and system to overcome the limitations of existing technologies, and apply the new method for developing emission factors for the unique but important sources in Alberta, e.g., tailings ponds, as well as landfills. The near-term objective is to establish the method by integrating the measurement of 2-D concentration distribution using ORS technology with inverse dispersion modeling to generate the real-time emission flux distribution. Eventually, the total emission can be quantified and the emission hot spots can be located. The mid- and long-term objectives are to apply this approach to study typical major fugitive emission sources in the study area (Alberta) such as agricultural sources, to characterize the methane emission dynamics and develop emission factors for those sources, based on which a more accurate and comprehensive emission inventory could be developed. The outcome of this research is anticipated to bring immediate benefit to the emission monitoring community by providing an economical and powerful tool to address the monitoring challenges for fugitive, large scale, heterogeneous, and highly variable sources of methane. It will also provide the climate modeling researchers new data of emission factors/dynamical characteristics for the unique fugitive sources in oil sands facilities to study the impact of energy development on the regional climate. The technology can be readily transferred to other gases when the ORS sensor is replaced with the ones for those gases, allowing other potential applications in warfare agent detection, emergency response, and emission management, which in return, would reduce the impact of industry emissions on environment and public health in Canada.