Methane emissions from industrial activities using drones
Report, 2023
The validation studies show that both the wall approach and controlled tracer releases can be used to quantify emissions, achieving an accuracy of up to 10 % for a simple, single, source. However, in the real measurement situation, the wall approach may be difficult to execute due to practical challenges like flying restrictions and the need for spatially dense data that can be interpolated to a homogenous grid and repeated measurements. In several cases, when the drone had to fly relatively close to the plumes, downwind of large buildings in complex and turbulent wind fields, the wall approach yielded large variability in the resulting flux. It is hence evident that the wall approach requires a thorough understanding of the measurement situation, and that repeated measurements are needed, at different distances from the source and in varying wind directions. The tracer approach was therefore preferred choice for obtaining emission rates in this study, although it is challenging to carry out representative tracer releases for larger sources and for cases when the measurements are performed near to the source, and in this case the wall approach is preferred. It was also shown that the drone-based tracer approach is advantageous to the ground based since it is then easier to capture the full plume.
Author
Johan Mellqvist
Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Geoscience and Remote Sensing
Alexander Vladimir Conde Jacobo
Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Geoscience and Remote Sensing
Sumedh Bandodkar
FluxSense AB
Samuel Brohede
FluxSense AB
Pontus Andersson
FluxSense AB
Brian Offerle
FluxSense AB
Jerker Samuelsson
FluxSense AB
Monitoring of methane emissions from industrial activities
VINNOVA (2021-04561), 2021-11-01 -- 2022-11-25.
Driving Forces
Sustainable development
Subject Categories
Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences
Environmental Sciences
DOI
10.17196/see.drone-vinnova-report.2023
Publisher
Chalmers