In the fall of 2015 Fluxsnse Inc. conducted a comprehensive five week campaign at six local refineries in the Los Angeles Basin to demonstrate the leak detection capabilities of multiple Optical Remote Sensing (ORS) techniques on a mobile platform, and quantify total facility-wide emissions of methane, non methane VOC, nitrogen oxides (NOx), and sulfur dioxide (SO2).
Additionally, Fluxsense, the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), and Atmosfir Optics Ltd. conducted a comparative measurement study to characterize and quantify emissions of VOC from a tank farm of one of the major refineries in the SCAB. For this purpose, Fluxsense used a vehicle equipped with a suite of ORS instruments including Solar Ocultation Flux (SOF), Differential Optical Absorption Spectroscopy (DOAS), and Extractive Fourier Transform Infra-Red (FTIR) spectroscopy. Concurrently, NPL operated their Differential Absorption Lidar (DIAL) system. Both contractors conducted measurements to quantify emissions from the entire tank farm as well as to identify potential leaks within the facility. At the same time, Atmosfir operated an Open Path FTIR (OP-FTIR) spectrometer on multiple light paths along the fenceline of the tank farm to measure fenceline VOC concentrations.
Overall, this study demonstrated that ORS techniques allow to:
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Characterize and quantify certain industrial emissions
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Conduct reliable fenceline measurements
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Rapidly identify potential leaks
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Provide real-time alarm system for communities
Also, measurement results from Project1 suggest that: