Development of a low cost, field portable, Imaging Fourier Transform Interferometer for gas leak detection in the Petrochemical industry

The Petrochemical Industry is very important to the United Kingdom both as a major employer and exporter. Petrochemical
facilities extend over very large areas and have extensive, complex infrastructure to transport and store chemicals and gases
under high temperatures and pressures. The health and saftey of the workers and of nearby residents is of paramount
importance and companies such as BP extend considerable effort and spend very large sums of money to ensure that their
petrochemical facilities are as safe as possible. The current health & safety and pollution monitoring approaches at
Petrochemical facilities involves the deployment of a large number of gas detectors as key locations around the petrochemical
facility. These gas detectors while being extremely accurate are limited in the extent of the area that they can detect gas
emissions coming from. Apart from missing gas leaks point-based detectors do not have the capability of identification patterns
on infrastructure indicative of stress or weakening of restraining material.

Currently available imaging based gas monitoring instruments are not capable of meeting the essential requirements of the
Petrochemical industry. Both Thermal cameras with filters and filter-based snapshot systems can detect the presence of
high concentrations of a number of gas species but have very poor sensitivity, they cannot differentiate different species
from a complex gas and are severely affected by the presence of water vapour in the atmosphere. Imaging Fourier Transform
Interferometers (FTIRs) have the potential to overcome the sensitivity and accuracy limitations of these other
technologies but current systems are very expensive, very heavy and have a very high power supply requirement with
consequent severe effects on the portability and deployment in environments with hazardous leaking gas. There is therefore
an urgent need for the development of a low-cost, highly portable imaging FTIR system that can differentiate and quantify gas
species at the sensitivity required by the Petrochemical industry.

The proposed instrument will be a development of a mid-infrared Fourier Transform Spectrometer, based on a novel static optical
configuration, that has been developed at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL). This instrument, known as the micro
Fourier Transform Spectrometer (microFTS), employs a simple optical arrangement to split and then recombine light to form a
complex modulated interference pattern (known as an interferogram). The instrument is compact (50 mm by 50 mm by 30 mm),
lightweight (~0.9 kg) and has a very high data acquisition time rate (~1 x 10-4 s-1). An important, additional component of the
project will be the development of an easy-to-use gas identification and analysis software package which will enable the microFTS
data to be processed into images showing both the presence and the concentration of the gas species of most importance to the
Petrochemical industry.

This project will involve collaboratoration with the National Physical Laboratory (NPL). The project will utilise
new, state-of-the-art analytical facilities at NPL which will enable a comprehensive evaluation of the sensitivity of the new
microFTS instrument in detecting the gas species of most importance to the Petrochemical industry (e.g. methane, carbon monoxide
, carbon dioxide, ammonia, acetic acid), at a range of temperatures (both gas and background), concentrations and mixtures.

The project will also involve extensive collaboration with BP. A series of extensive field-based evaluation campaigns of the microFTS
instrument will be carried out at the BP facilities at Saltend, near Hull. The opportunity to evaluate the design and capabilities of the
instrument in real situations under normal atmospheric conditions will be enbale to ensure that the instrument produced at the end of
project is an instrument that industry would wish to uti

The potential economic benefits of this project are considerable and varied. The extensive, complex infrastructure of
petrochemical plants, the high temperature and pressure conditions under which the chemicals and gases are kept and
moved, and the requirement for continuous monitoring of the production and transfer of industrial gases and chemicals
means that the current point-based approaches to health & safety and pollution monitoring are very limited in terms of
spatial coverage which can often lead to lack of detection of stressed infrastructure, gas leaks and badly performing flares
and stacks causing unneccessary danger to staff and envionmental pollution. This can lead to a range of delays and
additional costs if processing facilities have to closed or capacity reduced while the gas leaks are identified. Image-based
monitoring offers significant advantages over the current approaches by : providing image-based records; increasing
workplace safety; ensuring capacity and operating standards; improving air quality; cutting maintenance time and costs;
and improving compliance.

Currently available imaging based gas monitoring instruments are not capable of meeting the essential requirements of the
petrochemical industry. Current Imaging Fourier Transform Interferometers (FTIRs) are extremely expensive and lack
portability while filter-based systems are severely limited by their inability to differentiate the contribution from individual gas
species and their relatively low sensitivity. There is therefore an urgent need for the development of a low-cost, highly
portable imaging system that can differentiate and quantify gas species at the sensitivity required by the petrochemical
industry. The potential economic benefits are considerable both in terms of the effect on the sector and potential sales of
instruments. The deployment of a network of these instruments at processing facilities

The requirement for such gas imaging systems in all sectors of the processing and petrochemical industries is very large. A
large number of such systems would be required for each processing facility. As there is no comparable instrument
available the potential market is very large, potentially 100s of instruments per year. The potential to develop this
instrument further and mount it on a Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) will extend its environmental monitoring capability
significantly and develop a significant additional market.
This instrument would offer an extremely cost-effective alternative to current airborne-based campaigns as the combined
initial purchase cost combined with the running costs would be significantly less than even one medium-scale airborne data
acquisition campaign.

This instrument has considerable market potential in many other commercial sectors including general environmental
monitoring, defence and security , mineral and hydrocarbon exploration, and precision agriculture.

Methods for disseminating data/knowledge/skills
Training: It is important that the PDRAs receive training in science communication to a range of stakeholders.
To this they will attend NERC and EPSRC training courses in communicating science and business networking.

Workshops : As part of a previous NERC Knowledge Exchange project awarded to Ferrier (Ref : NE/H003347/1) a workshop on FTIR and Spectral emissivity Imaging was delivered at the RPSoc annual conference in September 2012. The workshop brought together a wide variety of researchers into FTIR spectroscopy and instrumentation from all over the world. A number of similar workshops at conferences with a high commerical particpation will be arranged.

Website: Web sites will be set up at the RAL and the University of Hull Earth Observation Science Laboratory. This will include project descriptions, 3 monthly updates, filed blogs and sections specifically targeted at end-users.