Development of a light-powered battery-less sensor for methane gas detection

甲烷是全球变暖的一个重要因素，因此减少甲烷排放，特别是石油和天然气作业的甲烷排放，是各国政府为实现气候目标可以采取的最具成本效益、最具影响力的行动之一。防止甲烷泄漏还会影响经济生产率和工人安全。大型现场泄漏检测需要可靠、高性价比的分布式传感器。甲烷泄漏也是其他几个行业的问题。分布式甲烷传感器网络将改善现有遥感调查方法的测量规则性和粒度。然而，硬接线是不实用的，也不符合成本效益，电池供电也是不可接受的，因为需要定期更换，要求工程师在危险区域工作，费用高昂。与设备维护和处理数以百万计的旧电池相关的额外旅行的可持续性挑战在环境上也是不可接受的。使用成本较低的便携式甲烷探测器进行工人安全监控需要笨重、可充电的电池供电设备，而出于运营和环境原因，行业一直在努力避免这些设备。我们将Albasense新颖的超低功耗甲烷传感器技术与Lightricity世界领先的高效光伏技术和电源管理IP/专业知识相结合并进行优化，以提供世界首个通过LORA进行通信的自主无电池、轻型远程无线甲烷传感器，最大限度地减少现场网关基础设施。这将在室内和室外运行，提供测量的粒度，以便在多种应用中实现更广泛和更具成本效益的传感。我们的目标是固定传感器和可穿戴徽章格式，以实现用例的多功能性。设备性能将在甲烷水平和环境条件的代表性范围内进行演示，这些情况与预计的使用案例相关，用户和气体探测器制造公司将提供投入。

Methane is a significant contributor to global warming so reducing methane emissions, particularly from oil and gas operations, is among the most cost-effective, impactful actions governments can take to achieve climate goals. Preventing methane leakage impacts economic productivity and worker safety too. Large-site leak detection requires reliable cost-effective distributed sensors. Methane leakage is also an issue for several other industries.Distributed methane sensor networks would improve measurement regularity and granularity over current remote sensing survey approaches. However, hard wiring is not practical or cost effective and battery power is unacceptable due to the need for regular changes requiring engineers working in hazardous areas at great expense. The sustainability challenge of additional travel associated with device maintenance and disposal of used batteries in the millions is also environmentally unacceptable. Worker safety monitoring with lower-cost portable methane detectors requires bulky, rechargeable battery-powered devices that the industry is seeking to avoid for operational and environmental reasons.We combine and optimise Albasense's novel ultra-low-power methane sensor technology with Lightricity's world-leading high-efficiency PV technology and power management IP/expertise to deliver a world-first autonomous battery-free, light-powered long-range wireless methane sensor communicating via LoRa, minimising on-site gateway infrastructure. This will operate indoors and outdoors providing the granularity of measurement to allow much more widespread and cost-effective sensing in multiple applications. We target fixed sensor and wearable badge formats for use-case versatility. Device performance will be demonstrated over a representative range of methane levels and environmental conditions of relevance to projected use-cases with input from users and gas detector manufacturing companies.