Gas Leak Detection System

ABB showed for the first time at Achema its ABB Abil­i­ty mobile gas leak detec­tion sys­tem. Designed to be 3,000 times more sen­si­tive than con­ven­tion­al meth­ods of detect­ing leaks, the hand­held device works by using ABB’s patent­ed Off-Axis Inte­grat­ed Cav­i­ty Out­put Spec­troscopy (OA-ICOS) tech­nique giv­ing oper­a­tors much greater con­fi­dence in the read­ings as well as pro­vid­ing a solu­tion that is sim­ple to use.
Con­ven­tion­al gas leak detec­tion sys­tems have relied on the units hav­ing con­tact with the ground and mea­sure the gas in parts per mil­lion (ppm). ABB’s new sys­tem is not only faster at detect­ing leaks with­out the need to be in con­tact with the ground, but is so sen­si­tive that it mea­sures gas in parts per bil­lion (ppb).
The car-based sys­tem con­sists methane/ethane ana­lyz­er, a GPS, a son­ic anemome­ter and pro­pri­etary leak detec­tion soft­ware that presents real-time geospa­tial maps of mul­ti­ple gas con­cen­tra­tions in real time. The software’s sophis­ti­cat­ed leak detec­tion algo­rithm com­bines the system’s mea­sure­ment of gas con­cen­tra­tions (CH₄, C₂H₆), local coor­di­nates (GPS) and local wind veloc­i­ty (son­ic anemome­ter) to esti­mate the loca­tion of the leak. Read­ings are stored in the device and can be trans­mit­ted in real-time to the cloud for cen­tral­ized monitoring.
Typ­i­cal appli­ca­tions for the hand­held device include pipeline mon­i­tor­ing, sur­vey­ing mains and ser­vices, odor inves­ti­ga­tion, con­struc­tion ver­i­fi­ca­tion, post dis­as­ter eval­u­a­tion and frost line evaluation.