Development of a regionalized framework to evaluate high waste gas efficiency incinerators

天然气排放和燃烧是加拿大温室气体排放的重要因素。2013年，它占全国排放量的5%，占石油和天然气行业排放量的21%。此外，气体排放和燃烧是污染物排放的来源，包括甲烷、颗粒烟灰、硫化合物、未燃烧的燃料和其他燃烧副产品，可影响人类健康、牲畜和环境。天然气排放和燃烧的主要原因是缺乏经济激励和技术限制。事实上，从石油中提取的天然气数量和质量都很低，无法证明传统技术所需的昂贵资本投资是合理的。然而，人们正在开发新技术来改善气体燃烧，减轻与气体排放和燃烧有关的环境问题。这是奎斯特清洁燃烧装置的核心业务。在这个项目中，提出了对Questor燃烧技术的环境和经济性能进行评估。本项目分为三个部分。首先，Questor在安装高效焚烧炉前后收集的空气质量数据将用于验证新的分区影响评估方法。其次，将开发一个与生命周期评估方法兼容的框架，以实现这些区域化数据和验证方法。然后，采用新的区域化LCA方法进行环境评价，同时进行经济分析。项目中产生的知识将为Questor技术的附加价值提供更清晰的分析，并有助于其在加拿大和国外的部署。从长远来看，设想将社会指标纳入对奎斯特焚化炉的评价，并根据采油地点的情况确定主要影响其附加值的参数。

Natural gas venting and flaring contributes significantly to Canadian greenhouse gas emissions. In 2013, itrepresented 5% of the national emissions and 21% of the oil and gas industry emissions. Moreover, gas ventingand flaring are sources of pollutant emissions including methane, particulate soot, sulfur compounds, unburnedfuel and other by-products of combustion that can affect human health, livestock and the environment. Themain reason for gas venting and flaring are the lack of economic incentives and technical constraints. Indeed,low volumes or quality of gas extracted with oil cannot justify costly capital investments required byconventional techniques to process it. New technologies are however being developed to improve gascombustion and mitigate environmental issues related to gas venting and flaring. This is the core business ofQuestor with its clean combustion units. In this project, it is proposed to evaluate the environmental andeconomic performances of the Questor combustion technologies. The project is organized in three parts. First,air quality data collected by Questor before and after installing an high efficiency incinerator will be used tovalidate a new regionalized impact assessment method. Second, a framework compatible with the life cycleassessment method will be developed to enable implementing these regionalized data and the validatedmethod. Then, the new regionalized LCA method will be used for the environmental assessment and aneconomic analyses will be conducted in parallel. The knowledge generated in the project will provide a cleareranalysis of the added value of Questor technologies and contribute to their deployment in Canada and abroad.On the long term, it is envisaged to include social indicators in the evaluation of Questor incinerators and toidentify the parameters that mainly influence their added value depending on the context of the oil extractionsite.