Estimating the Below-Ground Leak Rate of a Natural Gas Pipeline Using Above-Ground Downwind Measurements: The ESCAPE^-1 Model.

ABSTRACT: Natural gas (NG) leaks from below-ground pipelines pose safety, economic, and environmental hazards. Despite walking surveys using handheld methane (CH₄) detectors to locate leaks, accurately triaging the severity of a leak remains challenging. It is currently unclear whether CH₄ detectors used in walking surveys could be used to identify large leaks that require an immediate response. To explore this, we used above-ground downwind CH₄ concentration measurements made during controlled emission experiments over a range of environmental conditions. These data were then used as the input to a novel modeling framework, the ESCAPE^-1 model, to estimate the below-ground leak rates. Using 10-minute averaged CH₄ mixing/meteorological data and f

SUBMITTER: Cheptonui F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10610919 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature