ROBOTS REDUCE FUGITIVE EMISSIONS FROM HYDROCARBON FACILITIES

According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) 10% of all our greenhouse gas emissions are methane. ExRobotics wants to contribute towards solving this worldwide emissions problem. Together with Shell Pernis it has created an out-of-the box solution.

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ExRobotics created an emissions detector robot

According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) 10% of all our greenhouse gas emissions are methane. ExRobotics wants to contribute towards solving this worldwide emissions problem. Together with Shell Pernis it has created an out-of-the box solution.

Energy and industry are the second largest source of methane emissions in the United States and in other places of the world the biggest source. Across the world 25% of methane emissions come from the oil and gas industry. In the United States, fugitive emissions from the oil and gas industry total an estimated 13 million metric tons per year, amounting to $2 billion in lost revenue. Globally, the value of leaking gas is estimated to be $30 billion. However, a great proportion of these emissions currently goes unreported, meaning that the scale of the problem could be bigger than thought.

As environmental concerns gain traction sources of methane can easily be detected by satellites. Governments around the world are now pushing asset owners to solve this issue. The European Commission is working on a first-ever methane strategy that could play a “very significant role” in enabling the EU to increase its climate ambitions for 2030.

ASSETS LACK THE INSTRUMENTATION TO DETECT LOW LEVELS OF GREENHOUSE GASES

The challenge for assets owners is to detect a small emission before it becomes a “bigger” leak that will be detected by fixed instruments or satellites. In an ideal world you would like to detect emissions at low levels (+/- 1 ppm) and to know the exact location of the leak. After locating the leak, the problem can be scheduled for the next maintenance round and fixed before the levels of emission are visible to satellites or other detectors.

Building this kind of detection capability into your assets is expensive and entails high maintenance costs. You probably need to install hundreds of detectors. Detection is not the problem, but scale makes it hard! One of our customers said:

“The biggest maintenance activity [in a sour gas environment] is caused by the gas detectors. They have to be re-calibrated. At a minimum, the very best on the market that money can buy – and nobody buys them because they’re too expensive – only need to be recalibrated every year. Some of them at the other end have to be re-calibrated every three or four months. When you’ve got thousands of them in a plant, you’ve continually got, virtually on a 24-hour rotation, people going and changing gas detectors and taking out the old ones for calibration.”

ROBOTS CAN ROAM ASSETS AND DETECT VERY LOW LEVELS OF GREENHOUSE GASES

Since the start of ExRobotics, the development of a solution for this global problem has been a priority. Together with customers around the world we’ve been testing this solution in several process plants. The goal was a fully autonomous robot that carried gas detectors around daily inspection rounds. After 3 years of testing, driving 20.000 hours and many kilometres we have built together with customers and our software partner Energy Robotics an out-of-the box solution.

ExR-1 platform, semi-autonomous

​​​​​ExR-2 platform, fully autonomous

Our Emissions Detector robot is kept permanently on location on its docking station which continuously charges its batteries. It operates with no human intervention. It typically performs daily autonomous missions during which it follows pre-planned routes. If any gas is detected, the operator gets a notification. If nothing is detected the robot docks itself and starts charging again ready for its next detection round. If an operator gets a notification, they log onto the fleet manager software of our partner Energy Robotics, select the mission report of the robot that sent the notification and decide what to do next.

This robotics solution is a vital tool for asset owners in the battle to reduce fugitive emissions of methane, benzene and other gases.

Would you also like to contribute towards solving the worldwide emissions problem? Are you looking for an out-of-the box, cost-efficient solution?

ExRobotics created an emissions detector robot!