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

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.