Measuring the methane component of GHG emissions

With recent increases in global methane emissions, international efforts are underway to monitor and control the emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas (GHG). Following the success of the inaugural Industrial Methane Measurement (IMM) Conference in 2017, the second IMM will take place in 2019 to address this vitally important issue.

The IMM conference will run alongside the PEFTEC 2019 event in Rotterdam on 22nd and 23rd May, with delegates from both events sharing the ability to peruse the PEFTEC exhibition. Visitors will therefore be able to see the latest technologies for monitoring methane in fugitive, vented and partially combusted emissions from the world’s leading test and measurement equipment manufacturers.

Methane is an important Greenhouse Gas (GHG), absorbing significantly more energy than carbon dioxide for example, so it performs a major role in global warming. However, methane is less persistent in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, so the effects of methane reduction are likely to be faster.

Atmospheric methane concentrations rose during the decade from 2006 to 2016 following a previous decade of near-constant concentrations, so there is major concern about the sources of this increase and also with the monitoring methods. The methane measurement conference was therefore created to provide an opportunity for experts from around the world to share their experiences in the detection, monitoring and mitigation/prevention of methane emissions.

The conference themes were developed by the event’s scientific committee which includes internationally respected academics and researchers from NPL (UK), Environmental Defense Fund (USA), Royal Holloway University of London, Utrecht University (Netherlands), DBFZ (Germany), Sigma Space Corporation (USA) and TOTAL (France).

A keynote session will be delivered by Stéphan Plisson-Sauné from OGCI (oil and gas climate initiative), and a further keynote will be delivered by a speaker from EDF (Environmental Defense Fund) on ‘MethaneSAT: mapping global oil and gas methane emissions to accelerate mitigation’.

The speakers are drawn from academia, research institutes, energy companies, regulators and technology companies from all over the world. For example, the Universities represented by the speakers include Harvard and Colorado in the United States, London Manchester and Oxford in the UK, Utrecht in the Netherlands, the Technical University of Denmark, and St. Francis Xavier University in Canada.

The first session of the conference will cover current understanding, regulation and policy, and this will be followed by presentations on current capabilities and case studies, including methane emissions from biogas plants.

The first session on day two will address the demonstration and validation of technologies, and will include a range of talks; from the validation of controlled release studies, to the demonstration of portable cavity ring-down spectrometers. The final session will focus on emerging technologies for methane monitoring, and will include methane monitoring using drones, quantifying methane emissions using satellite observations and multiple talks on the progress of quantitative optical gas imaging.

The IMM conference will be of major interest to anyone involved with the measurement or management of GHG emissions, especially if they are fugitive, vented, leaked, spilled or emitted from an industrial process. IMM visitors are therefore likely to include researchers, regulators, energy companies, consultants, academics and environmental organisations, as well as instrumentation developers and manufacturers. Entry to the PEFTEC Exhibition and Seminar programme is totally free of charge for those that pre-register at www.peftec.com. The cost of admission to the PEFTEC and IMM Conferences is €125/day + VAT, or €200 + VAT for both days.